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

Music and violence: Is there a scientifically proven relationship?

Metal , hard rock… are genres that we almost automatically associate with aggression and tension.

However, a recent article published in the journal Frontiers in Human Neuroscience suggests that far from turning all listeners into rampaging monsters, these music genres can help them regulate their emotions and promote the emergence of positive feelings and moods.

Bringing violence to guitars.

Extreme rock-derived music caters to all the needs of bad press: a young audience with a weird aesthetic, often politically incorrect lyrics and cultural references that sound like they’re straight out of Game of Thrones . But perhaps what most characterizes this type of music is its energetic spirit , the outbursts of aggression reflected in both the instruments and the singers’ voices, and often, also in the lyrics.

We have previously talked in previous articles about the relationship between musical tastes and intelligence. In addition, we also replicated a study that linked musical preferences to personality.

As with video games , many public and media opinion leaders tend to condemn and stigmatize extremist music due to the depictions of violence often associated with it. It seems almost obvious that listening to aggressive music instills aggression in people, but there is no scientific evidence for this.

However, some studies go in the opposite direction . According to some research, music is not used to induce extreme emotional states, but is generally used to regulate emotions and restore a certain emotional balance in the body.

The article published in the journal Frontiers in Human Neuroscience reinforces this last hypothesis. The research team who wrote it tried to find out whether these regulatory effects of music also apply to extreme genres like metal, which is characterized by frenetic drumming and a singing style that often devolves into screaming.

How was the experience?

The researchers used a sample of 39 people, men and women aged between 18 and 34, who were fans of some extreme music genres (metal in all its forms, punk, hardcore punk, screamo, etc.). Specifically, participants had to become accustomed to listening to one or more of these genres for at least 50% of the time they spent listening to music each day.

All participants in the experiment underwent the so-called “anger interview”, which is a 16-minute interview aimed at arousing a state of anger in the subject by recalling specific situations capable of arousing feelings of anger or indignation. Immediately after this experience, some of these people spent 10 minutes listening to music of their choice (bringing their own music playing devices). In this way, the researchers had people in the group of volunteers who had to listen to music choose the pieces of music they usually listen to when they are angry. In contrast, those who had nothing to listen to were left waiting for 10 minutes.

The researchers decided to test the effects of this short music session on the volunteers’ emotions. To do this, before, during and after 10 minutes of music, these people were subjected to different tools to measure mood . Specifically, they used heart rate reading and applied several questionnaires about subjective psychological states.

results

The results showed how levels of hostility and anger decreased when listening to extreme music, just as these feelings decreased in people who waited in silence, away from their audio devices. This can be explained by the regulatory effect of the music or even by the passage of 10 minutes. In addition, the group of people who listened to 10 minutes of extreme music tended to experience greater relaxation and well-being .

This means that not only did the extreme music not produce any feelings of anger, it did not even bring out the mild anger that people felt when they turned on their podcasts.

Overall, this research shows that fans of metal and other similar genres listen to this type of music during anger outbursts, perhaps to regulate themselves emotionally, and that this type of music is not conducive to maintaining these negative moods.

Bibliographic references:

· Sarikaliu, S. and Erkyla (2007). The role of music in regulating adolescent mood. Psychology of Music, 35(1), p. 88–109.

· Sharman, L., and Dingle, J. A. (2015). Extreme metal music and anger therapy. Frontiers in Human Neuroscience, accessible at http://journal.frontiersin.org/article/10.3389/fnhum.2015.00272/full#B2