John F Mccandrew Metal Music Experiment

An experiment, executed by John F. Mast and Francis T. McAndrew, sought to test the hypothesis that listening to violent metal music can increase aggression in males. Metal music is a genre of music that is usually made with distorted electric guitars, a set of loud drums, and a vocalist. The instrumental component of metal music is loud and musically complex, while the vocals can range from outright screaming to normal singing. Lyrics in metal music are usually themed around negative emotions such as anger and depression and can also focus on themes around violence and war. The combination of these kinds of instrumental themes with the lyrical themes often give others the impression that those who enjoy metal music are more aggressive than the average person. To test this concept, John F. Mast and Francis T. McAndrew performed an experiment with the purpose of seeing if after listening to such music, experiment participants acted …show more content…
They gathered thirty-five undergraduate psychology students, each one male. The participants were ages between eighteen to twenty-two. The participants were divided into three groups. One group, the control group, sat in a room with no music playing at all for 8 minutes. The second group sat in a room listening to music that contained violent lyrics. Lastly, the third group listened to music with no violent lyrics. Before the musical exposure and after eight minutes’ pass among each group of participants, saliva samples were gathered from each participant. After this, each participant was given a glass of water, each glass containing the same amount of water, and a bottle of hot sauce. The participants were asked to pour hot sauce into the glass of water with the full knowledge that a new group of participants would drink said water for a taste test experiment, similar to one that the real participants had taken before the experiment to cast off suspicion of the true