Music and behaviour – the connection between the music genre, song lyrics and the presumed behaviour of the listener

Cerovac, Sanja. (2005). Music and behaviour – the connection between the music genre, song lyrics and the presumed behaviour of the listener. Diploma Thesis. Filozofski fakultet u Zagrebu, Department of Psychology. [mentor Ajduković, Dean].

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Abstract

Music is an integral part of a man's life, and it has been since the earliest periods of human history. Today, its infulence is visible in all the areas of our lives, social and private. Young people are considered to be the most vulnerable members of the society and also, the biggest consumers of music due to which certain music types are constantly suffering media attacks. This research wanted to investigate the situation in Croatia, considering the opinions on the influence different music types have on behavior. The aim of this research was to establish the connection between the music genre, the song lyrics and the presumed behavior of the listener, since it is proven that the examinees differently evaluate a certain text, depending on what genre it belongs to in their opinion. Two types of texts were used in this research ( a text with socially acceptable content and a text with socially unacceptable content) and 4 music genres (heavy metal, rap, pop and country). It was demonstrated on the sample, which consisted of 216 examinees who were undergraduate psychology students at the Faculty of Philosophy in Zagreb, that the examinees attribute socially acceptable i.e. socially unacceptable behavior primarily on the influence of the lyrics, ignoring the genre to which the lyrics supposedly belong. The results of the Croatian examinees were compared with the results of American examinees. The same results were obtained on the song lyrics, but different results were obtained on the genre. It was demonstrated that the examinees agree that it is not more probable that a text marked as heavy metal or rap would generate socially unacceptable behavior more than the same text marked as pop or country, but American examinees, unlike the Croatian, think that it is less probable such lyrics would provoke socially acceptable behavior than the same marked as pop or country.

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