Wednesday, 24 November 2010

10 Relevant Papers/Articles



This article is among the first to focus on commercially available, sexually violent rap music, so-called “gangsta” rap (GR) and its influence on attitudes toward women. Collegiate males with little experience with GR were exposed to GR music, lyrics, both, or neither. Thus the effect of GR music and lyrics were isolated from each other and from acculturation to GR. Collapsing across all attitude measures, neither lyrics alone nor lyrics with music resulted in significantly more negative attitudes toward women than music-only or no-treatment control conditions. Participants in the lyrics conditions had significantly greater adversarial sexual beliefs than no-lyrics participants, however.

The purpose of this study was to examine violence in music video programming. Using a representative sample of television content, we assessed whether the amount and context of physical aggression varied across different music video channels (BET, MTV, VH-1) and genres (adult contemporary, heavy metal, rap rhythm and blues, and rock). The results reveal that 15% of music videos feature violence, and most of that aggression is sanitized, not chastised, and presented in realistic contexts. Significant differences emerged in the prevalence and nature of violence by channel and genre, however. The findings are discussed in terms of the risk that exposure to violence in each channel and genre may be posing to viewers' learning of aggression, fear, and emotional desensitization.

The positive portrayal of violence and weapon carrying in televised music videos is thought to have a considerable influence on the normative expectations of adolescents about these behaviours.

The Rhetoric of Violence in Rap & Country Music
This study is a semiotic ethnography and ethnomusicological comparison of the rhetoric of violence found in two increasingly popular musical forms, rap and country. Based on the production-of-culture perspective, musical genres are considered socially constructed organizing principles and lyrics, the primary data, are viewed as ensembles of texts. The strategy is to address rap and country songs as they present claims concerning the focal concerns of trouble and toughness. First, analysis is framed in terms of three violent crimes–murder, manslaughter, and assault. Second, dimensions of toughness are specified–physical prowess and masculinity. This study illustrates the hidden resemblances between rap and country and highlights parallels between these essentially incompatible musical domains.


The influence of Misogynous Rap Music On Sexual Aggression Against Women
The purpose of this study was to determine the effects of cognitive distortions concerning women on sexually aggressive behaviour in the laboratory. Twenty-seven men listened to misogynous rap music and 27 men listened to neutral rap music. Participants then viewed neutral, sexual-violent, and assaultive film vignettes and chose one of the vignettes to show to a female confederate. Among the participants in the misogynous music condition, 30% showed the assaultive vignette and 70% showed the neutral vignette. In the neutral condition, 7% showed the sexual-violent or assaultive vignette and 93% showed the neutral vignette. Participants who showed the sexual-violent or assaultive stimuli reported that the confederate was more upset and uncomfortable in viewing these stimuli than did participants who showed the neutral vignette. These findings suggest that misogynous music facilitates sexually aggressive behavior and support the relationship between cognitive distortions and sexual aggression.


Genre Of Music & Lyrical Content: Expectation Effects
This study was designed to examine whether people's expectations differ regarding how music lyrics affect individual behaviour as a function of music genre. Because legislative attention and media publicity have been biased against certain types of popular music (i.e., heavy metal and rap), the authors expected that those genres of music would be viewed more negatively than other genres of popular music, for which there has been little or no negative publicity (i.e., pop and country). Participants (N = 160 college students) rated their perceptions of how the lyrical content of a song would affect listeners' behavior. The authors presented prosocial or antisocial lyrical passages to students (N = 160) under the guise of four musical genres (heavy metal, rap, pop, and country). Participants rated the potential impact of the lyrics on listeners' behavior. Findings indicated that lyrics labeled as heavy metal or rap were perceived as less likely to inspire prosocial behavior but not more likely to inspire antisocial behavior than the same lyrics labeled as country or pop.



Exposure to Violent Media: The Effects of Songs With Violent Lyrics on Aggressive Thoughts and Feelings


Rap Music & It's Violent Progeny: America's Culture of Violence in Context

America for all her protests against violent rap lyrics has failed to acknowledge her role in the creation of this relatively new art form. There is no denying the language in some rap lyrics could be construed as offensive, however, just as other music forms are not homogeneous, neither is rap music. It is far too simplistic to portray rap artists as perpetuators of behavior deemed socially deviant without placing the artists and their life experiences in context. Instead, this article considers rap music as a creative expression and metaphorical offspring of America's well-established culture of violence.

In two experiments, primed subjects were exposed to violent and misogynistic rap music and control subjects were exposed to popular music. Experiment 1 showed that violent and misogynistic rap music increased the automatic associations underlying evaluative racial stereotypes in high and low prejudiced subjects alike. By contrast, explicit stereotyping was dependent on priming and subjects’ prejudice level. In Experiment 2, the priming manipulation was followed by a seemingly unrelated person perception task in which subjects rated Black or White targets described as behaving ambiguously. As expected, primed subjects judged a Black target less favourably than a White target. By contrast, control subjects rated Black and White targets similarly. Subjects’ level of prejudice did not moderate these findings, suggesting the robustness of priming effects on social judgements.


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