MONDAY, May 5, 2003 (HealthDayNews) -- Add violent song lyrics to the list of cultural forces that can be toxic to your child's emotional well-being.
That's the conclusion of a new study in the May issue of the Journal of Personality and Social Psychology that contends songs with violent lyrics increase aggressive thoughts and feelings.
A slew of research has shown that aggressive content in television, movies and, to a lesser extent, video games, increases aggressive thinking and behavior. Before now, however, few people had looked at popular song lyrics.
"Anything that increases the extent to which a person is thinking in aggressive terms will tend to increase aggressive behavior," says study author Craig Anderson, a professor and chairman of the department of psychology at Iowa State University. "Lyrics are just one piece of the social environment that will have some impact."
Alan Hilfer, a psychologist with the child and adolescent unit of Maimonides Medical Center in New York City, says the study findings shouldn't "come as a big surprise."
"At some level, we have a fantasy that musicians and songwriters are the poets of our generation and that they have a unique insight," Hilfer says. "People decide this must have some validity to it and, if it has validity, you sometimes follow it."
U.S. Sen. Joe Lieberman of Connecticut, a Democratic candidate for president, says, "This study is another reminder of the potential health risks posed by media violence, and of the need for parents to pay attention to their children's media diets."
In a statement, Lieberman says he is preparing a proposal to set up a federal program to fund new research into "both the positive and negative consequences of electronic media use and expand our knowledge base in this area."
For their study, the researchers conducted five different experiments designed to assess the relationship between violent lyrics and aggressive thoughts and feelings. Aggressive thoughts, of course, often presage aggressive actions.
In the first experiment, male and female university students were asked to listen to songs with violent and non-violent content -- "Jerk-Off" and "Four Degrees" by the hard rock band Tool -- and then answer a questionnaire about their current feelings. Those who had listened to the violent song expressed higher levels of hostility than those who had listened to the non-violent song. Females also reported higher levels of hostility.
Participants in the second experiment listened to the same two songs by Tool. Those who heard the violent song tended to assign more aggressive meanings to ambiguous words such as "rock" and "stick."
In the third experiment, male and female college students who listened to four violent songs -- "Shoot 'Em Up" by Cypress Hill, "I Wouldn't Mind" by Suicidal Tendencies, "Hit 'Em Hard" by Run DMC, and "Jerk-Off" by Tool -- tended to read aggressive words more quickly than non-aggressive words.
The fourth experiment showed that humorous violent songs seemed to have the same effect on aggressive thoughts and feelings as non-humorous violent songs. The fifth experiment put humorous and non-humorous songs side by side, and then asked participants to answer questions about how they felt. Again, students who listened to non-violent songs expressed less hostility.
With all five experiments showing virtually the same thing, the researchers are confident of their results. "These are solid results," Anderson says. "When you do all that and get the same results five times, that's pretty solid evidence that this is not a fluke event. This cannot be easily dismissed by people who don't like that outcome."
Interestingly, the lyrics seemed to affect everyone the same way, regardless of the type of person who was participating in the study. "There's a strong belief among the general public that only sick people are really influenced by such things," Anderson says. "That belief is clearly not true."
However, listening to one violent song isn't likely to be damaging; the effect is more like that of cigarette smoking on cancer, with consequences accumulating over time with repeated exposure, Anderson adds.
"Generally speaking, we don't worry about one exposure. It's the cumulative effect that worries people and should worry people," he says. "If you're increasing aggressive thinking every time you're exposed to violent lyrics, how many exposures does it take before that way of thinking becomes habitual, when it doesn't require a violent song or video game in order for the person to be thinking violent thoughts all the time?"
The problem is heightened because the lyrics' effects are compounded by violent television, movies, video games, and hostile behavior in the home or in the neighborhood, Anderson says.
"Content matters. It matters in music, it matters in video games, and in TV. It also matters in day-to-day life," Anderson says. "If your kids see you belittling each other or behaving in an aggressive fashion or see a lot of violence in the neighborhood, they learn from that. And what they're learning is probably not something that will be to their benefit in the long run."
Anderson recommended sitting down and talking to your kids about dealing with conflict and about cooperation and compromise. "There are a lot of things parents can do but they don't do because they are so busy," he says.
More information
For more on media violence and its impact on children, visit the American Psychological Association, Children Now, or the Center for Media Education.
