The role of moral reasoning &amp; personality in explaining lyrical preferences

Messick, Kyle J.; Aranda, Blanca E.

doi:10.1371/journal.pone.0228057

Cited by 6 publications

(9 citation statements)

References 56 publications

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“…Metal music is a unique form of music that is distinguished by distorted guitars, loud volumes, and music that frequently incorporates compositional and structural extremes, both in tempos and vocal styles. Following the rise of metal music in the 1960s, a number of dedicated subcultures emerged, each identified by a unique style of metal music, and a number of other defining characteristics, including different styles of dress, the utilization of symbols, and some differences in moral reasoning styles, personality traits, and lyrical preferences (Messick & Aranda, 2020). These metal communities are often close-knit, and sustain contact through a variety of means, including through social network activity, and through the attendance of live music events, including concerts and festivals.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…These vocalizations are frequently associated with aggression and fear, however, these are not the emotions that fans of this music experience while listening to it (Olsen, Thompson, & Giblin, 2018). It is a high-tempo, energetic style of music that embraces taboo lyrical topics like death and murder, although not exclusively (Messick & Aranda, 2020). There are indie record labels worldwide that specialize in the promotion and releasing of music in this style, including Obliteration Records (Japan), Xtreem Music (Spain), Lord of the Sick Recordings (Russia), Transcending Obscurity Records (India), Osmose Productions (France), Vicisolum Productions (Sweden), 20 Buck Spin (United States), Maggot Stomp (United States), The Artisan Era (United States), Willowtip Records (United States), New Standard Elite (United States), Chaos Records (Mexico), and many more.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

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Metal for the masses: how indie metal labels have adapted for the digital era

Messick¹

2020

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One of the areas that has most readily adapted to the changing musical environment is within metal music culture. Dedicated fans have taken responsibility upon themselves to create smaller record labels that specialize both in bringing attention to new, rising bands, as well as to do the laborious work that is needed to make sure that historical, out-of-print metal albums continue to receive new listeners. Their dedication has resulted in tightly-woven communities between these labels, the bands, and music fans, and this has contributed to the resurgence of physical mediums including vinyl and cassettes. Strategies are discussed that help push sales of physical media, including the release of special and elaborate versions of albums, often with unique packaging, or with limited color variants of vinyl editions. This article includes interviews with individuals that run underground metal labels and that host metal music streams, and they share their experience of how metal has changed as the music industry and the consumption of music has moved into the digital era, and the pros and cons that come with that, including perceptions about streaming and streaming services. Comparisons are made between major corporate labels and indie record labels, and the proactive role of indie labels in keeping musical subcultures thriving is assessed.

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Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Metal for the masses: how indie metal labels have adapted for the digital era

Messick¹

2020

Preprint

Self Cite

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“…Future research will benefit from a greater focus on the experiences of self-declared fans and include experimental designs in conjunction with correlational analyses. Research will also benefit by investigating potential precursors to positive and negative engagement with heavy metal music, for example by assessing trait characteristics such as morbid curiosity (Scrivner et al, 2021) and moral reasoning (Messick & Aranda, 2020), in conjunction with fans' tendencies for harmonious or obsessive passion (Olsen et al, 2022). The effects of listening to heavy metal music on psychiatric patients is also an area of research that requires attention, as it is within this population that empirical evidence is critical for guiding clinical recommendations pertaining to music use.…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Psychosocial risks and benefits of exposure to heavy metal music with aggressive themes: Current theory and evidence

2022

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Concerns have been raised that prolonged exposed to heavy metal music with aggressive themes can increase the risk of aggression, anger, antisocial behaviour, substance use, suicidal ideation, anxiety and depression in community and psychiatric populations. Although research often relies on correlational evidence for which causal inferences are not possible, it is often claimed that music with aggressive themes can cause psychological and behavioural problems. This narrative review of theory and evidence suggests the issues are more complicated, and that fans typically derive a range of emotional and social benefits from listening to heavy metal music, including improved mood, identity formation, and peer affiliation. In contrast, non-fans of heavy metal music — who are often used as participants in experimental research on this topic — invariably report negative psychological experiences. Our review considers a comprehensive set of empirical findings that inform clinical strategies designed to identify fans for whom heavy metal music may confer psychological and behavioural risks, and those for whom this music may confer psychosocial benefits.

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“…The link between the lyrics component and listeners' moral values has been explored only recently. For instance, Messick and Aranda [69] analysed the link between lyrical preferences, moral reasoning domains and personality traits. The authors found that moral values define a unique and significant part of the variance in the lyrics preferences March 23, 2023 7/38 of different metal music sub-genre that was not explained by personality traits alone [69].…”

Section: Links Between Moral Values and Musical Tastesmentioning

confidence: 99%

Soundscapes of morality: Linking music preferences and moral values through lyrics and audio

Preniqi¹,

Kalimeri²,

Saitis³

2023

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Music is a fundamental element in every culture, serving as a universal means of expressing our emotions, feelings, and beliefs. This work investigates the link between our moral values and musical choices through lyrics and audio analyses. We align the psychometric scores of 1,480 participants to acoustics and lyrics features obtained from the top 5 songs of their preferred music artists from Facebook Page Likes. We employ a variety of lyric text processing techniques, including lexicon-based approaches and BERT-based embeddings, to identify each song's narrative, moral valence, attitude, and emotions. In addition, we extract both low- and high-level audio features to comprehend the encoded information in participants' musical choices and improve the moral inferences. We propose a Machine Learning approach and assess the predictive power of lyrical and acoustic features separately and in a multimodal framework for predicting moral values. Results indicate that lyrics and audio features from the artists people like inform us about their morality. Though the most predictive features vary per moral value, the models that utilised a combination of lyrics and audio characteristics were the most successful in predicting moral values, outperforming the models that only used basic features such as user demographics, the popularity of the artists, and the number of likes per user.Audio features boosted the accuracy in the prediction of empathy and equality compared to textual features, while the opposite happened for hierarchy and tradition, where higher prediction scores were driven by lyrical features. This demonstrates the importance of both lyrics and audio features in capturing moral values.The insights gained from our study have a broad range of potential uses, including customising the music experience to meet individual needs, music rehabilitation, or even effective communication campaign crafting.

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The role of moral reasoning & personality in explaining lyrical preferences

Cited by 6 publications

References 56 publications

Metal for the masses: how indie metal labels have adapted for the digital era

Metal for the masses: how indie metal labels have adapted for the digital era

Psychosocial risks and benefits of exposure to heavy metal music with aggressive themes: Current theory and evidence

Soundscapes of morality: Linking music preferences and moral values through lyrics and audio

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