Exposure to violent media: The effects of songs with violent lyrics on aggressive thoughts and feelings.

TLDR

The study situates itself within debates on how violent song lyrics influence short‑term aggression, catharsis, personality development, and potential moderating factors. The authors conducted five experiments to assess how violent song lyrics affect aggressive thoughts and hostile feelings. Participants listened to violent or nonviolent songs and then reported hostile feelings and aggressive thoughts. Violent lyrics consistently elevated hostile feelings and aggressive thoughts across experiments and song genres, and trait hostility did not moderate these effects.

Abstract

Five experiments examined effects of songs with violent lyrics on aggressive thoughts and hostile feelings. Experiments 1, 3, 4 and 5 demonstrated that college students who heard a violent song felt more hostile than those who heard a similar but nonviolent song. Experiments 2-5 demonstrated a similar increase in aggressive thoughts. These effects replicated across songs and song types (e.g., rock, humorous, nonhumorous). Experiments 3-5 also demonstrated that trait hostility was positively related to state hostility but did not moderate the song lyric effects. Discussion centers on the potential role of lyric content on aggression in short-term settings, relation to catharsis and other media violence domains, development of aggressive personality, differences between long-term and short-term effects, and possible mitigating factors.