Murder by Song

The date was October 26th, 1984 and 19-year-old John McCollum was spending his evening like a typical teenager on a boring night. At home, he was enjoying some of his favorite music by Ozzy Osbourne, listening to three of his favorite albums on headphones. But, unlike most teenagers, McCollum took his life that night with a .22 caliber handgun. McCollum's parents eventually filed a lawsuit against Osbourne and his music label claiming that it was the lyrics of the songs combined with the music that drove McCollum to take his life. The McCollum case, along with other studies, proves that the lyrics in music affect society in many different ways. They can induce anger, induce hostility, and affect the way one interprets its' views and actions.

The Study

Craig A. Anderson and Nicholas L. Carnagey of Iowa State University conducted a study to prove lyrics could induce a person to kill. Numerous experiments were conducted with two experiments yielding convincing statistics.

The first experiment was conducted to determine how different songs affect the performance on a variety of tasks. The experiment compared the results after listening to a song with violent content, "Jerk-Off", by Tool, and a song with non-violent content, "Four Degrees", by Tool. 29 female and 30 male students listened to both songs while completing a hostility scale test and another unrelated task after each song. The hostility scale asked the students to give a certain sentence like, "I feel furious", a number from 1 to 5 with 1 meaning they disagreed with the sentence and 5 meaning they strongly agreed with it. The results of the study indicated that the violent lyrics produced an increased feeling of hostility in comparison to the non-violent lyrics.

The second experiment involved 30 females and 31 males that were to rate pairs of words on whether the words were similar to each other. Word pairs from a Bushman experiment were used in which Bushman proved ten words as being obviously aggressive and ten words with possible aggressive and possible non-aggressive meanings. An example of an aggressive word was choke or blood. An example of a non-aggressive or possible aggressive word was animal or rock. A scale of 1 to 7 was used to rate the pair of words with 1 meaning not similar at all and 7 meaning extremely similar. The same two songs from the first experiment were used and the results showed that students would rate pairs of words such as animal and choke as being more similar after listening to the violent song than they would when they listened to the non-violent song.

Other Emotions Affected

Aside from aggression and hostility, all emotions are affected by lyrics. In a study conducted by S. Omar Ali and Zehra F. Peynircioglu from American University of Washington DC, lyrics take away from the emotion experienced when listening to happy and calm music and add to the emotion brought on by sad and angry music. They proved their point by playing half of a song with lyrics and half of the same song without lyrics. After each half, the participants in the study filled out 4 sheets for 4 emotions, which were happy, sad, calm, and angry. Each sheet had a rating scale from 1 to 9 that participants were to rate the song with. The rating of 1 meant they did not feel that emotion at all and a rating of 9 meant they really felt that emotion. The study's results showed that a person would feel differently after listening to lyrics.

Film Affected By Lyrics

While it is clear that emotions are affected by lyrics, lyrics also affect the way a film is interpreted. According to a study at Belmont College, lyrics affected the way a character was interpreted and the way the plot was viewed when watching a movie. In the study, a film clip was shown with 3 different versions of a song. One version had positive lyrics, one had negative lyrics, and one had no lyrics. The participants watched each part of the film and then filled out a questionnaire regarding their interpretation of what was going on. The answers to the personality of the main character were different depending on which version of the song the participants listened to.

Conclusion

As the Anderson-Carnagey study shows, violent lyrics do affect society. It was proven that aggression and hostility among people increased after listening to violent lyrics. As the Belmont and Washington DC study show, all emotions are affected by lyrics. While not a major influence, the evidence shows that lyrics are an influence, good or bad, on the way humans experience emotion.

Sources

"Audience Reaction to Art: Who is Responsible?" Art on Trial. 2005
http://www.tjcenter.org/ArtOnTrial/ozzy.html

Ali, Omar S., Peynircioglu, Zehra F. "Songs and Emotions: Are Lyrics and Melodies Equal Partners?" Psychology of Music. 2006
www.pom.sagepub.com/cgi/reprint/34/4/511.pdf

Musten, Laura. "The Impact of Song Lyrics on Film Interpretation." Psychology I.,
www.belmont.edu/burs/pdf/Psychology1.pdf

"Exposure to Violent Media: The Effects of Songs With Violent Lyrics on Aggressive Thoughts and Feelings." Journal of Personality and Social Psychology. 2003
www.psychology.iastate.edu/faculty/caa/abstracts/2000-2004/03ACE.pdf