The Dark Side of Music: How Music Can Affect Us in Ways It Unexpectedly Had on a Person. Maybe music is what helped them get over their last breakup, or maybe they'll be completely lost without their jam session in the car on the way home from work. Perhaps the conversation will turn to the well-studied and fascinating benefits of music therapy for children with developmental disabilities. Sometimes the conversation will be about how this hypothetical person can't stand listening to a certain genre of music, a particular song, an annoying jingle on TV, or how they think that, say, Gangster Rap is destroying our youth. Opinions are opinions, but these ideas are rarely given a second thought about how and why they came about. The truth about musical influences is not easy to guess. Although many researchers prefer to focus on the beneficial qualities of music, it is clear that music has an unlikely dark side that has the ability to manipulate emotions in unexpected and sometimes disturbing ways. Say no to plagiarism. Get a tailor-made essay on “Why Violent Video Games Should Not Be Banned”? Get an original essay Perhaps the most controversial of these ideas concerns the seemingly negative influences of rap, heavy metal, punk, and related supposedly "deviant" styles. music. Many studies have been conducted to establish a link between deviant music and aggressive behavior, but more recent studies from the last two decades seem to indicate that more research needs to be conducted on the subject. A popular and well-accepted way of measuring aggression in test subjects since 1999 is a test called the hot sauce paradigm (or HSP) in which experimenters provide the subject with a glass of water (usually after the stimuli or control inducing aggression have already been detected). been administered), warn the subject that the glass will be given to another subject- who happens to hate spicy foods- to drink, and that the subject can add as much hot sauce as they wish after being left alone in a room for more privacy. The problem is that the concoction is instead weighed to determine how much is added, and no one ends up drinking it. According to Lieberman, Solomon, Greenberg and McGregor (1999) who developed this method: "Our goal was to provide people with the opportunity to engage in behavior likely to cause direct and unambiguous physical harm to another individual, while minimizing ethical concerns arising from this method. of actual physical discomfort experienced by participants during the procedure. » Using the HSP method, Mast and McAndrew (2011) determined that when testing a group of male students, divided into a group exposed to heavy metal music with violent lyrics, a group exposed to lyrics nonviolent heavy metal music and a control group that listened to no music at all: "The group exposed to violent lyrics added significantly more hot sauce to the water than either of the other two bands…” indicating that it was the lyrics themselves that were the catalyst for aggressive behavior rather than the genre of music itself (Violent Lyrics in Heavy Metal, 2011). Triplett (2016) sought to replicate this same study using other aggression tests in place of the HSP method and with a larger and more varied group of participants that he divided equally among the three groups mentioned in previous experience in addition to an exposed group. to calm music with violent lyrics and a group exposed to calm music with non-violent lyrics. THEresults were unexpected. “…the present study failed to find a main effect of lyrical content or an interaction between lyrical content and background music on individuals' levels of aggressive behavior…. These results appear to contradict the conceptual models and empirical results of previous research” (p. 28). While research on the link between music and aggression is inconclusive, Triplett's study confirmed, "the results support the belief that music can influence an individual's affective state... Affective state plays an important role in a variety of critical cognitive and behavioral processes, including judgment, cognitive processing, and perception. » (p. 30). This indicates that, although deviant music may have external connotations on a negative subject, its influence is not sufficient to activate the intensity of affective motivation, that is, the desire to act accordingly. emotional excitement. So if specific genres aren't to blame, how, then, can music negatively affect people? The human tendency to seek emotional regulation through music is a good place to start. Evidence has shown that sometimes the brain can become obsessed – or ruminate – on negative music that matches its level of emotional discord. According to Carlson et al. (2015), “Rumination…involves repetitive cognitive focus on the negative aspect of a situation, without attempting to change the perception of the situation, and has been associated with increased risk of depression and anxiety” (p 2). When a person is going through a difficult time, they have the choice of ruminating or distracting themselves with music. The research then concludes that using music as a diversion from negative thoughts activates parts of the brain associated with effective emotional regulation and is therefore a more useful coping strategy, whereas rumination may cause long-term damage. term (p. 10). In another example of the negative implications of music on a person's health, Thorley (2011) introduces the notion of a “passive listener.” The passive listener is a person who has no control over the music and/or background noise present around them, particularly when living together in a public space. Here, when a person owns equipment that emits or causes noise imposed on helpless spectators, such as an iPod or portable gaming device, if the noise is not properly controlled, the act is defined as violence . In response to this unwanted noise invading one's personal space, the passive listener may potentially also succumb to violence. “Indeed, physiological and psychological changes in the body of the passive listener can produce feelings of aggression that can lead to expressions of violence” (p. 81). Ironically, these invasive noises can include those that are meant to be helpful, such as white noise machines and music specifically tailored to the workplace. This stressful violation of individual peace in the passive listener is due to their own lack of power over the situation, the potential poor quality of the sound through the speakers themselves, the volume and persistence of the offending sound and environmental factors that can distort the sound. her. Any of these can trigger a dramatic increase in stress levels, releasing typical hormones such as cortisol and adrenaline that usually prime the subject for a fight-or-flight response. Of course, whether a person has the motivational intensity to act in response to this stress response depends on their resilience and ability to cope, between.. 49).