Study: Violent music boosts aggressive thoughts:
You have got to be kidding me. How often do they trot this one out? A bunch of egghead psychiatrists released a study of 500 college students that said violent songs increased feelings of hostility. You don’t say. The feeling of hostility and acts of hostility are two different things. Why don’t they do a study on why some people are more prone to resorting to violence than others. I’ll bet you that it has nothing to do with music. For example, I listen to Black Sabbath, Iced Earth, Iron Maiden, Carnivore, and Type O Negative. But you know what music makes me have feelings of hostility? You guessed it, Dave Freakin’ Matthews. Anyway, check out how they did this study…
During the APA’s five experiments, conducted by 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 artists.
After listening, students were given various psychological tasks to measure aggressive thoughts and feelings, including asking the participants to classify words that have both aggressive and nonaggressive meanings, like rock and stick.
Results of the experiments showed that violent songs led to more aggressive interpretations of ambiguously aggressive words and increased the relative speed with which people read aggressive versus nonaggressive words.
Did they ever think to just ask the participants if they were feeling more hostile or not? What the hell does the way we read words have to do with violence?
They never will get it. It’s not the songs that cause people to act out in violence. That notion was in their head long before they heard the music. Study that.
The Trench Reynolds Report 