REAL LIFE NEWS: SEE, I TOLD YOU LISTENING TO HEAVY METAL WAS GOOD FOR YOU!
by Hazed
Received wisdom is that if you listen to loud, fast, extreme music, it’s going to exacerbate feelings of anger and incite you to violence. But it turns out that received wisdom is wrong – and in fact, loud and chaotic punk or heavy metal music makes you calmer because it’s a healthy way of processing anger.
Researchers at the University of Queensland, Australia, studied 39 people aged 18 to 34 who regularly listen to extreme music. By extreme music, they mean heavy metal, emo, hardcore, punk, screamo and various other subgenres.
The subjects were given a 16-minute “anger induction” which involved them description things that might make them irritated – relationships, money, work and so on – and then spending 10 minutes listening to songs of their choice, followed by 10 minutes of complete silence.
The researchers monitoring them discovered that the extreme music relaxed the participants just as effectively as sitting in silence.
Further study is needed – this was a very small sample, and it was conducted in lab conditions and not in the participants’ own surroundings such as at home in a darkened bedroom surrounded by death metal posters and black candles!
But it shows that so long as people can choose the music they like, metal and punk and so on aren’t going to make people angrier.
Of course, for those who don’t like extreme music, being played it probably would make them angry…
