Does Rap Music Cause Vaiolence

480 Words2 Pages
Many researchers have examined the effects of how music provokes violent behavior. This is an important issue because of how much time people spend listening to music.These studies can help uncover whether or not violent and aggressive music lyrics do in fact provoke individuals to lash out in a violent way. Anderson et al. (2003) studied whether or not media violence influences youth. They randomly assigned youths to watch either a short violent or a short nonviolent music video and then observed how they interacted with other people after viewing the music video. After each participant watched the music video for approximately 15 minutes, both physical and verbal aggression towards others was assessed using a 10-point scale: with 1 showing nonviolent behaviors and 10 showing a lot of violent behaviors. A correlational analysis was used to see if there was a relationship between a participant watching the violent music video and acting violent, or watching the nonviolent music video and not acting violent. The results showed that exposure to media violence had a statistically significant association with aggression and violence among youth. This research clearly demonstrates that exposure to media violence heightens the chances that a youth will behave aggressively and have aggressive thoughts in the short run. Arlin (1996) examined the “influence of exposure to violent rock videos on participants’ appraisals of their own aggressiveness”. Participants were preselected based on their scores on a measure of locus of control. After completing a measure of Buss and Durkee’s Hostility Inventory, they were randomly assigned to view either a violent music video or a nonviolent music video. After viewing the music video, participants once again completed the Hostility Inventory. The results revealed a main effect of locus of control, such that
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