New research on death metal has confirmed that the genre makes listeners happy.
“Death metal fans are nice people,” confirmed Professor Bill Thompson , illustrating the research he conducted. According to the study, the genre makes listeners happy and doesn't make them violent. “They're not going to go out and hurt someone.”
This is the verdict from the music laboratory at Macquarie University in Australia. Fans are no less sensitive to depictions of violence, as many assume. In fact, the enjoyment of violent music can be compared to the satisfaction of listening to sad music.
"That's kind of a paradox. Why do we want to listen to sad music? Why do we want to be sad? The same can be said of aggressive music. It's a psychological paradox."
How did Thompson and his team determine that death metal brings joy? They recruited 32 fans and 48 non-fans to listen to death metal or pop while viewing violent images.
We heard Bloodbath talking about cannibalism in "Eaten" or Pharrell Williams singing the sugary "Happy." Each participant saw an image in each eye – one violent scene and one non-violent scene – to study their reactions.
When a person sees two incongruent images, they tend to see the violent one more clearly. This is called "binocular rivalry".
Listeners of death metal don't tune out the violent imagery. They showed the same results as non-fans.
"If fans of violent music were less sensitive to displays of violence, the results would be different. This shows that the concerns of religious groups, censorship advocates, and others are unfounded in this assertion."
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