Passion for Violently Themed Music and Psychological Well-Being: A Survey Analysis

Abstract

While the benefits to mood and well-being from passionate engagement with music are well-established, far less is known about the relationship between passion for explicitly violently themed music and psychological well-being. The present study employed the Dualistic Model of Passion to investigate whether harmonious passion (i.e., passionate engagement that is healthily balanced with other life activities) predicts positive music listening experiences and/or psychological well-being in fans of violently themed music. We also investigated whether obsessive passion (i.e., uncontrollable passionate engagement with an activity) predicts negative music listening experiences and/or psychological ill-being. Fans of violently themed music (N = 177) completed the passion scale, scale of positive and negative affective experiences, and various psychological well- and ill-being measures. As hypothesised, harmonious passion for violently themed music significantly predicted positive affective experiences which, in turn, predicted psychological well-being. Obsessive passion for violently themed music significantly predicted negative affective experiences which, in turn, predicted ill-being. Findings support the Dualistic Model of Passion, and suggest that even when music engagement includes violent content, adaptive outcomes are often experienced. We propose that the nature of one’s passion for music is more influential in predicting well-being than the content or valence of the lyrical themes.

Understanding the attraction to music containing violent themes: A qualitative analysis.

“…Listeners may also use this music to strengthen or express their identity and sense of self, as well as to develop social bonds through connections with other fans in physical or online environments (Olsen et al, 2022;Thompson et al, 2023). Such commonly reported experiences align with three main components of SDT (autonomy, competence, and relatedness), which may support the capacity for such music to contribute to personal growth and psychological well-being despite its violent themes (Powell et al, 2023). Research in visual media violence supports the notion that the value, enjoyment, and desire to continue to engage with violent video games was associated with experiences of autonomy and competence (Przybylski et al, 2009).…”

Music, Pleasure, and Meaning: The Hedonic and Eudaimonic Motivations for Music (HEMM) Scale

“…Therefore, having both motivations for engagement with music may facilitate positive affective experiences with music, as well as other, more complex eudaimonic experiences that also foster and facilitate adaptive outcomes and well-being. This can even be the case for fans of overtly violent content, where fandom in such genres has been shown to positively contribute to psychological well-being [ 12 ].…”

“…The inclusion criteria were set such that participants who scored 20 or above, or averaged 4 or higher for each item, were deemed sufficiently passionate and eligible for inclusion. This is a commonly employed method in studies about passionate fandom [ 12 , 48 ]. Participants were asked a yes/no item to determine whether they identified as a passionate fan of music and were asked to select their favourite genre from a list of 25 different genres, with the option to include their own if it was not on the list of 25.…”

“…Violently themed music has been shown to elicit predominantly positive affective responses from its fans, and passionate fandom of such music has been shown to contribute to fans’ psychological well-being, despite the overtly violent lyrical content [ 11 , 12 ]. However, when compared to passionate fans of non-violently themed classical music, fans of violently themed extreme metal and rap music reported significantly greater negative affective experiences such as anger and fear, and lower levels of enjoyment and positive affective experiences in response to their respective preferred genres [ 11 ].…”

“…The terms hedonic and eudaimonic are often discussed in the context of well-being, with psychological well-being being conceptualised as the presence of both hedonic well-being (the experience of pleasure and avoidance of pain) [ 28 ] and eudaimonic well-being (experiences of personal development and purposefulness) [ 29 ]. Music has been shown to significantly contribute to fans’ hedonic and eudaimonic well-being, including violently themed extreme metal and rap genres [ 12 ]. The role of eudaimonic enjoyment in positive psychosocial experiences of music listening has been hypothesised, whereby eudaimonic enjoyment may facilitate self-reflection—a common function of music listening [ 30 , 31 ].…”