Listening to violent music won't desensitise you to violent imagery
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Publicly released:
2019-03-13 11:01
Death metal fans aren’t generally desensitised to violence, according to Aussie researchers, although they aren’t as affected by the music as non-fans. Researchers played violent and neutral pictures simultaneously to each eye while participants listened to happy pop music or extreme metal with violent lyrics and asked which picture they focused on. The researchers found both the 32 metal fans and 48 non-fans showed bias towards violent imagery regardless of the musical genre, but for non-fans, the bias was stronger while violent music played.
Journal/conference: Royal Society Open Science
Link to research (DOI): 10.1098/rsos.181580
Organisation/s: Macquarie University, ARC Centre of Excellence in Cognition and its Disorders (CCD)
Funder: This research was supported by an Australian Research Council Discovery Project grant no. (DP160101470) awarded to W.F.T.
Media Release
From: The Royal Society
Implicit Violent Imagery Processing among Fans and Non-fans of Violent Music
Royal Society Open Science
There are abiding concerns that persistent exposure to violent media reduces sensitivity to violence. Using a binocular rivalry paradigm, we investigated whether fans of violent Death Metal music exhibit reduced sensitivity to violent images and whether the presence of violent music affects the way violent imagery is processed. We observed no evidence that fans of Death Metal are generally desensitized to violence. However, the presence of Death Metal music enhanced sensitivity to violent imagery for non-fans, whereas fans were unaffected by the presence of this music. We discuss the results in view of current debates on violent media.
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