Isabella Lee

WP 4

Engl 161

12/07/23

Research Paper

Millions of people listen to the same songs, the same artists, and even the same

playlist everyday, but not a lot of thought typically goes into monitoring the content of the

songs. The lyrics of the songs people listen to can directly impact their opinions on people

and how their brain determines is a good way to treat people. In theory, this could begin to be

a problem when you actually look at the contents of some of the more widely listened to songs

as violence and sexualization are both frequent topics. A considerable amount of popular

music depicts women in a negative or solely sexual light or promotes violence and aggression

has a measurable negative impact on the daily life of women in society however, it has only

been proven to affect moods and the emotions of people. While it is true that there are other

outside factors that also contribute to a negative impact on women, music is such a large part of

many people’s daily lives and there is a general consensus among the researchers who have

studied that this that there is a causational relationship between lyrics and changes in people’s

thinking and as such it would be foolish to write off the impact of these types of songs on

women just because there are larger or more well known causes, but it would also be unwise to

put so much emphasis on the issue without really examining what the specific impact is. To
examine this topic more, I will look at studies pertaining to how lyrics affect people when the

lyrics are focused on and when they are not, a specific look at the contents of lyrics of popular

songs from one year, the difference between aggressive thoughts and feelings, and some of the

unknown factors such as the long term effects and how children are affected in the long and

short term along with how popular music specific to certain languages might be different to

popular music in English is.

For starters, it is important to know that music lyrics are proven to have at least some

effect on how a person thinks and it does at least somewhat boost violent thought in specific

circumstances. In a study done by Craig Anderson, his reports that “Results of five experiments

show that violent songs lead to more aggressive interpretations of ambiguously aggressive

words, [and] increasing the relative speed with which people read aggressive vs. non-aggressive

words … this effect was not the result of differences in musical style,” (Anderson 2003). But

looking further into the study and the specific circumstance mentioned earlier, this study shows

the results of exposure to aggressive lyrics when the listener is really paying attention to what the

song is saying. This is an important distinction when coupled with an analysis of this study with

Nicholas Carnagey, both Carnagey and Anderson point out that “aggressive lyrical content of

popular music is often discernible only to the most attentive of listeners,” (Anderson and

Carnagey 2003) which is the important distinction to have when assessing this particular

situation. When listening to music, the average person is not deciphering the lyrics as they

listen and oftentimes people are singing along to whatever they think the lyrics are which is

shown by the phenomenon of people sharing their incorrect interpretations of song lyrics. When

looking at the study by Carnegy, it is important to remember this and account for many people
not really listening to the lyrics as the study is done on people who are purposefully listening to

the lyrics. A good way to showcase this is with a study done by Lennings and Warburton where

they played one of three songs for participants with three levels of violent lyrics without

requiring them to focus on the lyrics and determined whether or not it increased violent feelings

by how much chili sauce they distributed for another person, a proven method explained in the

text used by Lieberman, Solomon, Greenberg, and McGregor (1999) in which the participants

were exposed to different stimuli, aggressive and not aggressive, and the participants would then

have to distribute an amount of chili sauce that another unseen participant, who they were told

could not handle spice, would have to consume all of. Essentially the study referenced how

much the stimuli affected aggression by how much pain the participant would inflict on a

stranger based on how much chili sauce they administered for the other person. The findings of

Lennings and Warburton were that “There was no significant difference between the three songs

in terms of hot chili sauce allocated … and the pattern of hot chili sauce allocation between

groups was similar for all three stimuli,” which does align with the assessment that while

aggressive lyrics do increase aggression when the person focuses on the lyrics, most people are

not focusing on the lyrics when listening to music so it largely becomes a non-issue (Lennings

and Warburton 2011). That being said, there is also the point that misogynistic lyrics affects the

potential for female-directed aggression in the listeners as pointed out by Fischer and

Greitemeyer saying, “Taken together, these data suggest that exposure to misogynistic lyrics may

activate negative cognitions and hostile attributions about women in men that, in turn, potentiate

female-directed aggression,” but again this is an assessment of what happens when the listener is

actively listening for the meaning of the lyrics (Fischer & Greitemeyer, 2006).
 It is also important to point out that while aggressive lyrics do increase aggression in

people, according to Greitemeyer “In real life, when people may repeatedly listen to prosocial

songs, the positive effects … on prosocial behavior might be even more pronounced. Thus, the

media does not only increase the likelihood of aggressive and violent behavior, but could be also

effectively used to improve social interactions” (Greitemeyer 2009). This in combination with

the actual amount of violence and degradation towards women in music lyrics of popular songs

points to there being a more positive than negative effect on the daily lives of people as a much

smaller portion of lyrics contain degrading terms directed at women or violent content than not.

To back this up, an algorithm was used by a group of researchers on 94 of the 100 top songs of

2017 and they found that “About 9% of the stanzas included degrading terms towards women

[and] About 7% of the stanzas included violence,” (Couto et al. 2022) which is a comparatively

small number to the songs that do not contain either. It should also be noted that the occurrence

of degrading terms towards men was not large enough to consider in the findings of the data

analysis. As such, more of the music is what Greitemeyer considered “neutral” and increased

prosocial interactions among the participants in his study, which does support the position that

the negative impact is smaller than one might anticipate from some of the aforementioned

studies. It should also be noted that the occurrence of degrading terms towards men was not

large enough to consider in the findings of the data analysis so it does appear to have a

disproportionate focus on women so it can be concluded that the real life impact follows the

same bias.

Another point to consider is that there is a difference between thoughts and feelings.

Even though the previously mentioned studies did find that aggressive thoughts are increased
with exposure to violent lyrics, it should be pointed out that there is a difference between having

an aggressive thought and actually feeling aggressive. Although this is an admittedly minor

distinctions, it is important as another group of researchers found that “There was no significant

difference in terms of aggressive feelings, despite the fact that findings from prior studies

indicate that there should be differences between these two groups for affective states like

emotions and feelings,” which means there is a bit of an unknown with how thoughts and

feelings differ in their effect on human actions (Böhm, Ruth, and Schramm 2016). Even though

there is more to be explored in that particular area, the fact that aggressive feelings were not

increased as was hypothesized does hold the implication that the actual real life impact of violent

or degrading lyrics towards women does not have as much of an effect on the daily lives of

women as aforementioned researchers assumed.

Something else to consider is the age of the person listening to this music as a very

large portion of a person’s brain’s development happens at a very young age. Specifically 80% of

a child’s brain development happens in the first 1,000 days of life according to M Fairview

(Fairview 2021). In the aforementioned studies, the participants studied were adults who were at

the end of or past the age where the brain stops developing (mid to late twenties), but really

where there should be more focus is on how lyrics and musical stimuli affect how a child thinks

about people as this would theoretically be longer lasting and more impactful than how lyrics

affect adults past the age of development. The songs mentioned previously in the study on 2017

music, though not necessarily being intended for children, were exposed to children through the

public settings where current popular songs are played such as some stores, parties, and

potentially school functions. Lyrics such as “I'ma send a model home with her neck throbbin'”
by Klye in his song “iSpy” glorify and encourage violence that an adult might be developed

enough to acknowledge as it just being a lyric and nothing more in the long term, but children

are still learning and developing their sense of morality and if these lyrics affect adults in the

short term, that leaves the question of how they affect children in the long term. While we can

see and make well informed connections between the data gathered on how adults are impacted

by these lyrics in short term settings, there is much to be explored about the long term impact on

said adults and both the long term and short term effect on children and adults younger than the

age of which the brain stops developing.

A similar point to make is that lots of these popular songs that have violent or sexual

content have a much older intended audience in their uncensored form. As referenced earlier, the

song “iSpy” is an explicit track that was not made with kids listening to it being the goal. When

considering the intended audiences of popular songs in terms of children and how the lyrics

could potentially affect them, a somewhat blurry boundary does begin to form between what is

clean enough by radio standards to be played out on the radio unedited that still has themes of

violence and/or sexualization and what just would not be played in public settings without

censoring due to the explicit nature. Of course there is going to be outliers in terms of intended

audience vs who actually listens to the music, but large portions of the listeners of each

individual song likely will fall within the age group that the artist had in mind with their fans and

who listens to their music. As such, I think a more pointed study of how the violent and/or

sexual songs that do not get censored for radio and are played in more public places like stores

and school functions affect children long term in relation to aggression, specifically aggression

towards women would be a very illuminating data set to this particular issue.
 Something else to consider is the language of the song being listened to and what

languages the listener actually speaks. It’s one thing for an English speaker to listen to popular

songs which are often in English, but the whole world does not speak English and the lyrics of

songs just would not have the same effect on listeners if they did not speak the language the song

was written and performed in. In the case of the referenced study above, a large majority of the

songs were in English so any conclusions drawn from the data collected can realistically only be

applied to popular songs in English and the possible effects from the lyrics only apply to English

speaking people. There is a possibility that outside of English speaking countries, the popular

music in different languages may have a different rate of sexual and/or violent themes and those

lyrics could possibly be targeting women more than the globally popular music that is typically

written in English. If that were the case, then the likelihood of someone developing a sense of

aggression towards women could potentially be much higher than what I conclude from my

research. In that case, I would suggest gathering more information on the reasoning behind why

there is a difference in violence and sexual content being portrayed in popular songs and working

from there to change the specific culture surrounding it. Another possible remedy for

everywhere would be to help fund better education for children that engages and promotes

critical thinking and gender equality just to counteract any negative views on women gained

from song lyrics.

There are some conflicting points on how aggressive or violent lyrics in songs affect

the daily lives of people and more specifically women, however my findings as of right now lead

me to conclude that while there is an impact on the daily lives of adults and that impact
disproportionately affects men and women such that women are more negatively affected, the

actual real life impact is small and not as concerning as one might be lead to believe from

Anderson’s study mentioned earlier when it comes to adults. The combination of Anderson and

Carnegy’s research and Lennings and Warburton’s research leads me to believe with current data

that the issue lies with how the song lyrics are approached, and not the actual lyrics themselves

due to the fact that the average listener is not actively listening to the meaning of the lyrics.

Lennings and Warburton showed that when the listener is listening to the song and not focusing

on lyrics alone, there is little to no difference in the levels of aggression displayed in the listener

compared to Anderson’s earlier study that focused on the impact of when participants focused

solely on the lyrics. That being said, I think a more long term study of how the lyrics of songs

children listen to affects their way of thinking about people negatively depicted in music, such as

the oversexualization of women, would be a greater indicator in this topic as the studies

referenced were done on adults and much of the development of the brain happens in

adolescence. There is much research to do on this particular subject in order to fully understand

the impacts of lyrics on people and how that might differ between adults and children based on

their brain’s stage of development, and maybe even how the lyrics could potentially differ in

effect between men and women.

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Psychology, vol. 84, no. 5, 2003, pp. 960–971,

[Link]

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visual violent media exposure on aggressive behaviour: The role of Song Lyrics,

video clips and musical tone.” Journal of Experimental Social Psychology, vol. 47,

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Böhm, Tamara, et al. “‘count on me’—the influence of music with prosocial lyrics on

cognitive and affective aggression.” Psychomusicology: Music, Mind, and Brain,

vol. 26, no. 3, 3 Nov. 2016, pp. 279–283, [Link]

Couto, Leticia, et al. “A content analysis of music lyrics exploring the co-occurrence of

violence, sexual content, and degrading terms toward women.” Sexuality &

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[Link]

Fairview, M. “First 1,000 Days – a Critical Time for Children’s Brain Development.” First

1,000 Days – a Critical Time for Children’s Brain Development | Masonic Institute

for the Developing Brain, 18 Aug. 2021,

[Link]/news/first-1000-days-critical-time-childrens-brain-development.

Gibbons, Sheila J, editor. “Violent music lyrics increase aggressive thoughts and feelings,
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exposure to misogynistic song lyrics and men’s female‐directed aggression?”

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[Link]

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[Link]