Punk, metal, hard rock… are genres that we associate almost automatically with
aggressiveness and tension .

However, an article recently published in the magazine Frontiers in Human Neuroscience suggests that, far from transforming all their listeners into angry beasts, these musical genres could help them regulate their emotions and encourage the emergence of positive emotions and moods.

Carrying violence in the guitars

Extreme music derived from rock meets all the requirements for a bad press: a young audience with a strange aesthetic, often politically incorrect lyrics and cultural references that seem to come from
Set of Thrones . But it is possible that what most characterizes this type of music is its energetic spirit , the bursts of aggression that are reflected both in the instruments and in the voice of the vocalists and, often, also in the lyrics of the songs.

In previous articles we have talked about
the relationship between musical tastes and intelligence. In addition, we also echoed a study that related musical preferences to personality.

Just like it happened with the
video games , a large part of public opinion and media opinion leaders have tended to condemn and stigmatize extreme music because of the representations of violence to which it is often associated. It seems almost evident that listening to aggressive music inoculates aggressiveness in people, and yet there is practically scientific evidence in this sense.

Instead,
if there are studies that point in the opposite direction . According to some research, music does not serve to induce extreme emotional states, but is often used to regulate emotions and restore a certain emotional balance to the body.

The article published in
Frontiers in Human Neuroscience reinforces this last hypothesis. The research team that wrote it had set out to find out whether these regulatory effects of music were also applicable to extreme genres such as metal, characterized by frenetic drum rhythms and a style of singing that often turns into heartbreaking screams.

How was the experiment conducted?

The researchers used a sample of 39 people, men and women between 18 and 34 years old, who are fans of some kind of extreme music (metal in all its variants, punk, hardcore punk, screamo, etc.). Specifically, participants had to be in the habit of listening to one or more of these genres for at least 50% of the time they spent listening to music on a daily basis.

All the participants in the experiment went through the so-called “anger interview”,
a 16-minute interview aimed at inducing a state of anger in the experimental subject by recalling concrete situations capable of arousing feelings of anger or indignation. Right after this experience, some of these people spent 10 minutes listening to music of their choice (they brought their music playback devices with them). In this way, the researchers made sure that the people in the group of volunteers who had to listen to music would choose pieces of music that they would normally listen to when they were angry. Those who didn’t have to listen to anything waited for 10 minutes.

The researchers focused on testing the effects this small music session had on the volunteers’ emotions. To do this, before, during and after the 10 musical minutes,
these people were subjected to various mood measurement instruments . Specifically, they used the reading of the heart rate and the application of several questionnaires on subjective psychological states.

Results

The results show how the levels of hostility and anger decreased during listening to extreme music to the same degree that these emotions were reduced in people who waited in silence, away from their audio devices. This could be explained by the regulating effect of the music or also by the passage of the 10 minutes. In addition,
the group of people who went through the 10 minutes of extreme music tended to feel more relaxed and well .

This means that not only did the extreme music not produce any feelings of anger, but it did not accentuate the slight anger that people felt when they turned on the audio playback devices.

Overall, this research shows how fans of brass and similar genres listen to this type of music during angry episodes, perhaps to regulate themselves emotionally, and that this type of music does not translate into a maintenance of these negative moods.

Bibliographic references:

  • Saarikallio, S. and Eerkkilä (2007). The role of music in adolescents’ mood regulation. Psychology of Music, 35(1), pp. 88 – 109.
  • Sharman, L. and Dingle, G. A. (2015). Extreme metal music and anger processing. Frontiers in Human Neuroscience, accessed at http://journal.frontiersin.org/article/10.3389/fnhum.2015.00272/full#B2