Listening to songs like "Angel of Death" protects heavy metal fans from existential angst

Heavy metal band Black Label Society on stage Brazil, via Flickr/FockaListening to songs about death and dressing yourself in t-shirts featuring skulls and demons might seem like a strange way to combat existential angst. Nonetheless, a new study in Psychology of Popular Media Culture shows that listening to heavy metal helps fans of the genre deal with their own mortality. This is likely because to fans, heavy metal represents so much more than a genre, it embodies a way of life and a sense of identity. The results support and extend what's known as Terror Management Theory – the idea that we instinctively deal with existential angst by thinking about what has meaning to us in the world and reinforcing our self-esteem.Julia Kneer and Diana Rieger first measured the salience to 30 heavy metal fans of their "cultural world view" – they did this by asking them to rate words, including those pertaining to heavy metal, as fast as possible, as either positive or negative using keyboard keys. On this test, fast responding to heavy metal words is taken as a sign that the heavy metal culture is salient in a participant's mind.Next, all the participants spent five minutes writing about their own death. Then half of them listened to one of two well-known heavy metal songs (Paranoid or Angel of Death), while the other half listened to three minutes of an audio book unrelated to heavy metal (Don's story from Fusselfieber). Finally, all the participants repeated the test of the salien...
Source: BPS RESEARCH DIGEST - Category: Psychiatry & Psychology Authors: Source Type: blogs