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Heavy metal and aggressiveness: Does extreme music make us violent?

Heavy metal and aggressiveness: Does extreme music make us violent?

March 2, 2024

Punk, metal, hard rock ... are genres that we associate almost automatically with the aggressiveness and the tension .

However, an article recently published in the magazine Frontiers in Human Neuroscience suggests that, far from transforming all their listeners into furious beasts, these musical genres could help them regulate their emotions and favor the emergence of positive emotions and moods.

Lead violence on guitars

The extreme music derived from rock meets all the requirements for bad press: a young audience with a strange aesthetic, often politically incorrect lyrics and cultural references that seem to come from Game of Thrones . But it is possible that what most characterizes this type of music is its energetic spirit , the bursts of aggressiveness that is reflected both in the instruments and in the voices of the vocalists and, often, also in the lyrics of the songs.


In previous articles we talked about the relationship between musical tastes and intelligence. In addition, we also echoed a study that linked musical preferences with personality.

As has happened with the video game , much of public opinion and media opinion leaders have tended to condemn and stigmatize extreme music because of the representations of violence to which it is often associated. It seems almost evident that listening to aggressive music inoculates aggressiveness in people, and yet practically scientific evidence in this regard.

Instead, yes there are studies that point in the opposite direction . According to some researches, music does not serve to induce extreme emotional states, but it is usually used to regulate emotions and return a certain emotional balance to the organism.


The article published in Frontiers in Human Neuroscience reinforces this last hypothesis. The research team that wrote it had proposed to know if these regulating effects of the music were also applicable to extreme genres such as metal, characterized by frenetic drum rhythms and a style of singing that often becomes heartbreaking cries.

How was the experiment performed?

The researchers used a sample composed of 39 people, men and women between 18 and 34 years old, interested in some kind of extreme music (metal in all its variants, punk, hardcore punk, screamo, etc.). Specifically, participants should have the habit of listening to one or more of these genres for at least 50% of the time they spent listening to music on a daily basis.

All the participants in the experiment went through the so-called "anger interview", a 16-minute interview that was intended to induce a state of anger in the experimental subject through the memory of concrete situations capable of awakening feelings of anger or indignation. Right after this experience, some of these people spent 10 minutes listening to music of their choice (they brought their music playback devices with them). In this way, the researchers made sure that the people in the group of volunteers who had to listen to music would choose pieces of music that they would normally hear when they were angry. For their part, those who did not have to listen to anything remained waiting for 10 minutes.


The researchers focused on checking the effects that this small musical session had on the emotions of the volunteers. For this, before, during and after the 10 musical minutes, these people were subjected to various instruments measuring moods . Specifically, they used the reading of the heart rate and the application of several questionnaires on subjective psychological states.

Results

The results show how the levels of hostility and anger decreased during listening to extreme music to the same degree that these emotions were reduced in people who waited in silence, far from their audio devices. This could be explained by the regulatory effect of the music or also by the passage of 10 minutes. Further, the group of people who went through the 10 minutes of extreme music tended to feel greater relaxation and well-being .

This means that the extreme music not only did not produce any feeling of anger, but it did not accentuate the slight anger felt by the people at the time of turning on the audio playback devices.

In general, this research shows how fans of metal and other similar genres listen to this type of music during episodes of anger, perhaps to regulate emotionally, and that this type of music does not translate into a maintenance of these negative moods.

Bibliographic references:

  • Saarikallio, S. and Eerkkilä (2007). The role of music in adolescents' mood regulation. Psychology of Music, 35 (1), pp. 88 - 109.
  • Sharman, L. and Dingle, G. A. (2015). Extreme metal music and anger processing. Frontiers in Human Neuroscience, accessed at //journal.frontiersin.org/article/10.3389/fnhum.2015.00272/full#B2

Workout like a Madman | Aggressive Metal Workout Music (March 2024).


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