By Eric R. Danton

Remember when all those fussy Moral Majority types said that exposure to music with violent lyrics can prompt aggressive behavior? Seems they’re right, according to a study published in the May issue of the Journal of Personality and Social Psychology.

The study, conducted by researchers in Iowa and Texas, found a link between listening to violent song lyrics and feelings of aggression and hostility, bolstering arguments that such content can lead to violent behavior — a finding that belies the notion that violent music provides a cathartic release for anger and negative feelings.

That may not come as a shock, given that studies examining violence on TV, in movies and in video games have reached similar conclusions.

This study, “Exposure to Violent Media: The Effects of Songs With Violent Lyrics on Aggressive Thoughts and Feelings,” extends the same hypothesis to another pop-culture medium, lead researcher Craig A. Anderson says.

“There really hasn’t been much research on music lyrics, certainly no conclusive research had been done prior to this, so this research in a sense fills a gap,” says Anderson, chairman of the psychology department at Iowa State University. “We’ve known for years from TV research and movie research and, more recently, video game research that content matters.”

The study consisted of five experiments designed to measure participants’ reactions to violent songs. The first two assessed the effects of violent lyrics on hostile feelings and aggressive thoughts that college student volunteers demonstrated after listening to a pair of songs by the band Tool, one with lyrics deemed violent and one considered nonviolent.

The third experiment expanded on the first two by adding a larger selection of songs, including pairs of tunes by Suicidal Tendencies, the Beastie Boys and Run D.M.C. The last two experiments studied the combined effect of violent, but humorous, song lyrics on aggressive thought. They included tunes by Johnny Cash — “A Boy Named Sue” — and “Weird Al” Yankovic.

“Each study has its own particular strength and weakness, and by doing multiple tudies on the same hypothesis, but with slightly differeent design – in some cases different measures, in other cases different songs – if in doing that you get similar resutls, then you should be more confident that you’re actually converging on a correct answer,” Anderson says.

Results from all five experiments strongly suggest that listening to songs with violent lyrics increases feelings of aggression, at least in the short term. Such feelings can influence the way people view social interactions, leading them to interpret ambiguous actions as hostile and react more aggressively in turn, writes Anderson and his colleagues, Nicholas L. Carnagey from Iowa State and Janie Eubanks from the Texas Department of Human Services.

Contentions supported

The findings support what moral watchdogs have argued for years, and one of them, Sen. Joseph I. Lieberman, D-Conn., says the paper is an important tool in understanding the effects of violent music.

“This study is another reminder of the potential health risks posed by media violence, and of the need for parents to pay attention to their children’s media diets,” Lieberman says. “But as the authors themselves say, it also shows that we need to know more about exactly how violent lyrics as well as violent images affect consumers, particularly chiildren.”

Lieberman says he will soon propose a new federal program to fund more research into both the positive and negative consequences of electronic media use.

That’s fine, says a record-industry lobbying group, but the ultimate responsibility still rests with parents.

“We agree that parents should be educated so they can make their own determinations about what media content is appropriate for their children,” says Amy Weiss, a spokeswoman for the Recording Industry Association of America.

The group made no comment concerning the study’s findings.

Anderson acknowledges that groups advocating stricter controls on media content are likely to embrace his research, but he said scientific studies and public policy aren’t synonymous.

“Of course the whole public policy question is really much more difficult than just the research question,” says Anderson, the father of two teenage children and a self-described fan of Black Sabbath, Steppenwolf and the Who.

“A lot of times, people don’t get that, that the research questions are questions that have a real, honest-to-God discoverable answer. Public policy is never that clear. There are legal issues that are relevant, but there are also personal-values issues that are relevant.”

Author: Eric R. Danton