Monday, January 27, 2020

Metal music fans exhibit moral reasoning styles dependent on their metal sub-genre identification; the moral reasoning styles explain partially lyrical preferences that weren’t already explained by personality

Morality in everything, chapter 23958:

The role of moral reasoning & personality in explaining lyrical preferences. Kyle J. Messick, Blanca E. Aranda. PLoS One, January 24, 2020. https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0228057

Abstract: Previous research has supported that personality traits can act to a precursor to media preferences. Due to the ongoing association between morality and media preferences in public and political discourse (e.g., blaming immoral behaviours on media preferences), this research sought to expand the knowledge about factors that contribute to media preferences by investigating if moral reasoning styles explain some of the variance that was not already explained by personality traits. A specific form of media preferences were chosen – lyrical preferences in metal music – as claims between metal lyrical themes and behaviour have been ongoing since the 1980s, despite a lack of empirical evidence to support these claims. A lyrical preferences scale was developed, and utilizing this scale, it was found that different types of metal fans exhibit different moral reasoning styles dependent on their metal sub-genre identification. Further, it was found that moral reasoning styles explain a portion of the variance in lyrical preferences that weren’t already explained by personality traits. In particular, lyrical preferences were often thematically consistent with moral reasoning content and personality traits, such as that individuals that preferred lyrics about celebrating metal culture and unity had higher levels of the group loyalty moral reasoning domain alongside being higher in extraversion. The implications of moral reasoning styles and personality traits as being precursors to media preferences are discussed.

Discussion


This study examined the association between lyrical preferences, moral reasoning domains, and personality traits. We first developed a lyrical preferences scale that allowed for comparisons between members of the metal music community. We then identified differences about moral reasoning based on the type of metal preference (e.g., black metal fans had the lowest scores on the sanctity/degradation moral foundation), and further analyses revealed a rather nuanced understanding about how lyrical preferences are related to moral foundations.

Correlations showed that enjoying lyrics about depression, hardships, love, and emotional turmoil (i.e. human experience) are related to having higher scores on the care/harm and fairness moral domains, which suggests that those people who prefer these lyrics might find the struggles of others related to their own hardships, and might be more empathetic to those struggles. Individuals who showed a preference for vulgar lyrics, such as misogyny, violence, and Satanism in their lyrical content, have significantly lower scores on the sanctity/degradation moral domain compared to other metal fans. One possible explanation is that these metal music fans have a different understanding of sanctity (e.g., thinking of the body as a temple), which is materialised in how these music fans with vulgar/immoral lyrical preferences have higher levels of extreme and unusual piercings and body modifications than metal fans with other lyrical preferences (something we recorded in this study, but was not a focus of the analysis). It is also possible that those who prefer more disgusting lyrics are approaching the idea of disgust in a fundamentally different way than most other music and metal music fans. Adding further cause for concern, the sanctity/degradation subscale has recently been questioned for how inconsistently it applies to people who are not religious [64], which is primarily the case for metal fans in the current sample, as most participants identified themselves as atheistic, agnostic, or ‘none.’ This moral domain has been further criticized, as it has been claimed that ‘purity’ is a descriptive label, and does not reflect a form of moral processing [65]. Future research could explore the relationship between the sanctity of the body and the self for metal fans, particularly for those that prefer immoral/vulgar lyrics.

A preference for lyrics about embracing metal culture & fun, which include themes like unification and loyalty, was associated with higher scores on the moral domains for authority/subversion, group loyalty, care/harm, and sanctity/degradation. It is expected that lyrics about loyalty would be associated with higher levels of loyalty as a moral foundation, which would extend into the authority moral domain, since this shows an appreciation of leadership and followship, as well as a respect for traditions. These lyrics celebrate metal culture, which might extend to a more formal view of metal culture, via respect for traditions, loyalty to the metal community, increased levels of caring, and more common views on purity compared to those who prefer vulgar/immoral lyrics and more extreme metal subgenres. This is a direction that future research could further explore. Lyrics about honour and pride include sentiments that fit well into a worldview that has structure and respect for that structure.

A preference for lyrics about history, mythology, and nature, which include lyrics about war, patriotism, and martyrdom, was positively associated with the group loyalty moral foundation. This association is reasonable, as lyrics about war can emphasize themes such as loyalty to a nation, regime, or historical entity, so individuals who enjoy these are likely seek out lyrics about loyalty as this is a moral principle important to them.

Having a preference for lyrics about science and science fiction only had a relationship with the care/harm moral domain. These are likely lyrics that are more morally neutral, which might explain the lack of an association with other moral domains. The association between science and science fiction lyrics and the moral foundation that focuses on empathy and struggle is not an intuitive one, so future research could explore this relationship by encompassing preferences for this sort of content in other forms of media, such as science fiction films.

Personality traits also had a relationship with lyrical preferences, including vulgar/immoral lyrical preferences negatively relating to agreeableness. People that enjoyed lyrics about embracing metal culture and fun had personality traits that reflected being more extraverted and agreeable, so this lyrical style that embraces activities with groups and friends is consistent with being outgoing, sympathetic, and trusting of others. Preferring lyrics about the human experience was positively related to being more agreeable, neurotic, and open to experience, showing that choosing to listen to emotional lyrics about human experiences is often consistent with having a personality associated with feelings like anxiety, depression, and loneliness. In other words, there was consistency between the lyrical subject matter and the emotional experiences of the person. Similarly, choosing to listen to lyrics about history, nature, and mythology was associated with higher levels of neuroticism and openness to experience. Lastly, enjoying lyrics about science & science fiction were only related to higher levels of openness to experience. Openness to experience is likely associated with lyrics about history and science fiction because these are lyrical topics that describe experiences that might be far from the user’s everyday experiences, indicating a preference towards lyrics that have interesting and often unfamiliar narratives that satiates their openness and desire for new experiences.

These relationships were given further clarification by investigating the extent to which moral reasoning and personality traits explained lyrical preferences. It was found that moral foundations do explain a unique and significant portion of the variance in lyrical preferences that was not already accounted for by personality traits. For example, preferring lyrics about human struggle was related to the moral foundation for care in addition to higher levels of neuroticism and agreeableness. In this instance, an individual that has higher levels of care and empathy involved in how they morally reason might also prefer lyrics about human emotions and struggles that similarly use their ability to be empathetic, since some of their personality traits (neuroticism) suggest that a tendency towards emotional instability.

In relation to the insights from moral panic theory, this study clarifies the direction between moral reasoning and lyrical preferences adding support to the hypothesis that lyrical preference reflect pre-existing moral foundations and personality traits, rather than lyrics leading to a ‘corruption’ of morality. This is consistent with previous findings showing that those who perform acts of violence seek out lyrics that justify their pre-existing beliefs about violence [4].

This study has also brought insights to the metal studies literature, showing that adhering to a metal subgenre has significant implication. For example, black metal fans had lower levels in the sanctity/purity moral domain, which is consistent with the frequently anti-religious message of black metal culture [66].

A few limitations should be noted. First, the moral foundations subscales had slightly lower internal reliabilities than anticipated. It is worth nothing that recently, Moral Foundations Theory (MFT) has been criticized for how difficult it is to replicate across cultures [67]. These limitations might extend into metal culture, in which case MFT might not be the ideal way to explore the moral reasoning of people within metal music culture. Further, the lyrical factor scale developed here comes with its own limitations. It is not expected that the factors presented would be universal across every music culture since lyrical themes and meanings vary across cultural contexts. Although the different types of lyrics could be used in the study of other music cultures, it is likely that the factor structure of the scale would be different. For instance, gang-related activities fall under the vulgar/immoral factor for metal fans, but they might not fall into the same factor in hip hop music, since lyrical topics like Satanism (also part of the vulgar/immoral factor) probably don’t appeal to the same types of hip hop fans as gang-related lyrics. A future study could investigate the degree to which lyrics are interpreted as entertaining, relational, or as a statement of endorsement towards a certain perspective (e.g., pro-violence). This meaning-making approach to lyrics would allow for understanding the role and functions of lyrical preferences, with some functional possibilities including escapism, coping, or feeling like someone else understands a user’s emotional turmoil. Other future studies could evaluate how behaviour directly relates to moral reasoning and media preferences, since it is known that moral foundations don’t always correlate with moral behaviours [68]. Whereas it is the case that violent media, such as video games [2829], can reduce violent behaviours, a future study could see if listening to music with violent lyrical themes serves a similar function.

This study, which explored the relationship between lyrical preferences, moral preferences and personality traits will hopefully add more nuance to the discussion of types of music and their association with moral and immoral behaviours. We suggest that lyrical preferences might originate in pre-existing characteristics, including moral reasoning styles and personality traits. This evidence can be added to that of other precursors for media preferences, including emotional vulnerability/relatability [1], personality factors [23], and pre-existing ideology [4]. Given this, it is hoped that future associations between media (not limited to metal music), and behaviour will take into account these psychological factors, since there is now evidence that moral orientation is as similarly fundamental as personality traits in predicting media preferences.

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