Social reward from music and prosociality-related agreeableness facets: a multinational secondary analysis of musicians and non-musicians

Music fosters social connection; however, musician identity and perceptual skill may not capture the extent to which individuals value this function. We analyzed data obtained from 1,438 adults (717 musicians and 721 non-musicians) who were recruited from 35 research centers in 16 countries. Self-reported Social Reward, measured using the extended Barcelona Music Reward Questionnaire (eBMRQ), was associated with Big Five Inventory-2 (BFI-2) Compassion, Trust, and Respectfulness. Objective musical perception was assessed using the Mini Profile of Music Perception Skills (Mini-PROMS) measure. Country fixed-effects models were used, incorporating research-center-clustered small-sample inference and adjusting for age, sex, education, objective skill, and musician status. Social Reward was associated with Compassion ( β = 0.242, 95% confidence interval [CI]: [0.171, 0.313], q < 0.001), Trust ( β = 0.160, 95% CI: [0.093, 0.226], q < 0.001), and Respectfulness ( β = 0.101, 95% CI: [0.048, 0.155], q < 0.001). Objective skill demonstrated a modest independent association with Respectfulness ( β = 0.086, 95% CI: [0.027, 0.145], q = 0.016), whereas musician status showed no residual association in the joint models. The estimates remained positive across within-country standardization, leave-one-country-out analyses, and random-effects synthesis of country-specific slopes, although country-specific estimates were imprecise. Item-level analyses supported the empirical separation of Social Reward and Agreeableness facets, but measurement invariance was not established. Social Reward, therefore, demonstrated a distinct positive average association beyond skill and musician status, particularly with Compassion and Trust. These cross-sectional findings do not establish causality or universal effects across countries.