The Psychology of Aggressive Music

The culture surrounding metal music has been rejected by mainstream society for over twenty years. Metal is perceived by the masses as masculine, assertive, and warlike. Metal does not use an accepted structure for controllable mainstream music, and control is often how money is made in the music industry. There is a quality inherent to metal which makes it fundamentally alien to the “mainstream” paradigm, and this is in fact a positive quality that is nourished and valued by the metal community.

There have been many debates with regard to the topic of whether or not music can create violent thoughts in the mind of listeners, but most of them boil down to determining if the listener possessed any prior mental issues. Being a heavy listener to the likes of all sorts of metal, I can easily vouch for myself in saying that many songs can raise my personal aggression level, which is part of the reason I listen to the music in the first place. I often use music to change or elevate my current state of emotion – if I’m pissed off at something I can just throw on some Necrophagist or Cryptopsy and channel that aggression. I’m not necessarily saying I’m going to go out and hurt someone, but other people with less self-control can listen to more and angrier music to further fuel their violent tendencies.

Recent studies from the APA (American Psychological Association) show that songs with violent lyrics increase aggression related thoughts and emotions and that this effect is directly related to the violence in the lyrics. The findings, appearing in the May issue of the Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, contradict popular notions of positive catharsis or venting effects of listening to angry, violent music on violent thoughts and feelings. While I agree with the general findings from these surveys and studies, I feel as though there is a particular venting effect that can often go hand-in-hand with angry or violent music. You wouldn’t listen to the music if you felt that it brought a negative catharsis upon yourself, and this idea can be fleshed out by Plato’s philosophic concept that you will never willingly do anything to yourself that is of a negative nature.

Among a series of five experiments involving 500 college students, researchers from Iowa State University and the Texas Department of Human Services examined the effects of seven violent songs by seven artists and eight nonviolent songs by seven other artists. The students listened to the songs and were given various psychological tasks to measure aggressive thoughts and feelings. One task involved participants classifying words that can have both aggressive and non aggressive meanings, such as “rock” and “stick”. Results of the five experiments show that violent songs led to more aggressive interpretations of ambiguously aggressive words, increased the relative speed with which people read aggressive vs. non aggressive words, and increased the proportion of word fragments (such as h_t) that were filled in to make aggressive words (such as hit). The violent songs increased feelings of hostility without provocation or threat according to the authors, and this effect was not the result of differences in musical style, specific performing artist or arousal properties of the songs. Even the humorous violent songs increased aggressive thoughts.

I have witnessed broken bones and other bodily damage at certain concerts from metal bands, but most results from studies have shown that the music most often only causes mental aggression, not aggressive behavior. Metal concerts and other venues simply provide the opportunity to release the aggression in an open environment. Music is an art, and arguably the most important art to most teenagers nowadays. If music contains violence, it is metaphorical and has artistic merit in expressing a particular emotion. A lot of the more popular music might not have much merit, but music alone still shouldn't be causing such big problems. There is something else going on if a teenager listens to a song about murder, and then goes out and murders someone. It seems as though in modern times, parents simply don't pay enough attention to their kids. The only reason I'm the way I am today is because I led myself here. I surround myself with books, music, and people that inspire me, and challenge me to be who I want to be. Everyone should learn to do that, but not everyone does. It really isn't fair that adults are blaming the youth of America for their own mistakes. Even if music is a significant problem in our society, whose generation produces that, again?