The Effects of Heavy Metal Music on Arousal and Anger

Gowensmith, W. Neil; Bloom, Larry J.

doi:10.1093/jmt/34.1.33

Cited by 60 publications

(41 citation statements)

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“…Others argue that it can escalate behaviour to antisocial or risk-taking levels (Roberts, Dimsdale, East, & Friedman, 1998;Stack et al, 1994;Stuessy, 1996). These statements are supported by a range of studies that have highlighted specific relationships between self-harming/suicide and a preference for heavy metal and Goth music (Lester & Whipple, 1996;Young, Sweeting, & West, 2006), or between antisocial behaviours and rock/heavy metal music (Arnett, 1991;Bushong, 2002;Gowensmith & Bloom, 1997;Rubin, West, & Mitchell, 2001). Stack has been one of the most provocative researchers on this topic, going so far as to calculate the strength of the association between the dominance of country and western music on local radio and higher-than-average suicide rates (Stack & Gundlach, 1992).…”

mentioning

confidence: 84%

Examining the relationship between self-reported mood management and music preferences of Australian teenagers

McFerran

Garrido

Lucy³

et al. 2014

Nordic Journal of Music Therapy

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The influence of music on the moods and behaviour of young people has been much contested. Whilst some parties accuse the music industry of purposefully poisoning the minds of youth, others understand the relationship between teenagers and their music preferences as reciprocal. This article reports on an investigation examining what 111 Australian adolescents reported about changes in their mood before and after listening to selfselected genres of music. Most young people reported using music to improve their mood, particularly when their initial state was already positive; however when feeling sad or stressed, some young people reported a worsening mood. Correlational analysis revealed that whilst the distressed young people in this sample were more likely to prefer listening to angry music and have a preference for metal, they did not report a more negative effect on their mood than any other genre of music. The researchers conclude that mixed methodologies may be better suited for examining this complex phenomenon and for avoiding overly simplistic interpretations of data. Music therapists are encouraged to initiate dialogue with distressed young people in order to increase their consciousness about whether their mood improves or worsens when listening to self-selected music.

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confidence: 84%

Examining the relationship between self-reported mood management and music preferences of Australian teenagers

McFerran

Garrido

Lucy³

et al. 2014

Nordic Journal of Music Therapy

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“…This is congruent with the findings of both Arnett (1991) and Wooten (1992) who discussed how the adolescents in their studies commonly reported a heightened level of energy and an inducement of positive mood states. Similarly, Gowensmith and Bloom (1997) suggest that participants who listen to heavy metal music experience a more heightened sense of arousal than those who listened to other genres, and this seems implicit in the descriptions contributing to the 'positive energy' theme.…”

Section: Personal Strengthmentioning

confidence: 99%

Metal made me who I am: Seven adult men reflect on their engagement with metal music during adolescence

Hines

McFerran

2014

International Journal of Community Music

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The relationship between adolescent mental health and their habits of music listening with regard to metal music has been consistently explored in academic research since the rise in popularity of heavy metal in the late 1970s and early 1980s. Correlational studies have been most prominent, but do not tend to explore this relationship in the depth required to garner a detailed understanding of the nature of this music engagement. The aim of this study was to investigate adolescent experiences of metal music from the perspective of adults reflecting on this time in their lives. Descriptions shared in e-mail interviews by seven men from different countries were analysed using phenomenological strategies. Fourteen different themes were deduced from the data, highlighting a variety of experiences. These ranged from engaging and validating difficult emotions to gaining positive energy, finding out about world issues and negotiating social networks. The results of this enquiry challenges the dualistic notions of ‘good’ and ‘bad’ music often interpreted from quantitative data.

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“…According to some estimates, the music arouses emotions in only about 55 -65% of the episodes, and there seem to be large individual differences in overall prevalence (Juslin & Laukka, 2004;. Moreover, there are considerable individual differences between listeners regarding the precise emotional state a musical event will arouse (e.g., Gowensmith & Bloom, 1997). Thus, though few researchers today would deny "that some music is capable of exciting some emotion in some people some of the time" (Ball, 2007, p. 257), a more delicate issue is to explain why the emotion occurred in the first place.…”

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confidence: 99%

From Sound to Significance: Exploring the Mechanisms Underlying Emotional Reactions to Music

Juslin¹,

Barradas²,

Eerola³

2015

The American Journal of Psychology

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Additional information: Use policyThe full-text may be used and/or reproduced, and given to third parties in any format or medium, without prior permission or charge, for personal research or study, educational, or not-for-prot purposes provided that:• a full bibliographic reference is made to the original source • a link is made to the metadata record in DRO • the full-text is not changed in any way The full-text must not be sold in any format or medium without the formal permission of the copyright holders.Please consult the full DRO policy for further details. A common approach to study emotional reactions to music is to attempt to obtain direct links between musical surface features such as tempo and a listener's responses. However, such an analysis ultimately fails to explain why emotions are aroused in the listener. In this article, we we explore an alternative approach, which seeks to explain musical emotions in terms of a set of psychological mechanisms that are activated by different types of information in a musicalevent. This approach was tested in four experiments that manipulated four mechanisms (Brain stem reflex, Contagion, Episodic memory, Musical expectancy), by selecting existing musical pieces that featured information relevant for each mechanism. The excerpts were played to 60listeners, who were asked to rate their felt emotions on 15 scales. Skin conductance levels and facial expressions were measured and listeners reported subjective impressions of relevance to specific mechanisms. Results indicated that the target-mechanism conditions evoked emotions largely as predicted by a multi-mechanism framework and that mostly similar effects occurred across the experiments that included different pieces of music. We conclude that a satisfactory account of musical emotions requires consideration of how musical features and responses are mediated by a range of underlying mechanisms. Mere sound can have profound effects on listeners. It can be argued that sound is more 'intimate' than sight -"more inside our 'heads'" (Thompson, 2009, p. 125). Nowhere is this impact more apparent than in the case of music. Still, it is often regarded as one of the great mysteries in life that music, which consists only of abstract tone sequences, is able to arouse such strong emotions. What is more, listeners differ considerably in their emotions to music (Sloboda, 1996). Thus, Gutheil (1952) asked whether music and emotion research "can ever reach the goal of science, namely to discover laws of cause and effect in order to predict the results" (p. 11). In this article, we explore some of the principal ways in which music might evoke emotions and show that despite their elusiveness, emotional reactions to music can be predicted to a greater extent than is usually believed. Music and Emotion ResearchMusic is ubiquitous in today's society (North & Hargreaves, 2008). It often occurs in a variety of social contexts, and accompanies people's activities "from the cradle to the grave" (Gregory, 1997, p. 124). In a significant...

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The Effects of Heavy Metal Music on Arousal and Anger

Cited by 60 publications

References 0 publications

Examining the relationship between self-reported mood management and music preferences of Australian teenagers

Examining the relationship between self-reported mood management and music preferences of Australian teenagers

Metal made me who I am: Seven adult men reflect on their engagement with metal music during adolescence

From Sound to Significance: Exploring the Mechanisms Underlying Emotional Reactions to Music

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