I didn’t need a gaggle of researchers to tell me that something’s slightly wrong with you if you rock out to the Biebs.
Because science.
According to The Washington Post, NYU conducted a survey of some psychology students. The results?
The researchers gave a questionnaire to more than 190 NYU psychology students that rated their level of psychopathy.
The students listened to a songs from a wide range of musical selections, from classical to recent Billboard 100 songs, and rated them on a seven-point scale. Most of the songs were unfamiliar to the students. Wallisch and Leal looked for correlations between preferences for certain songs and the students’ scores on the psychopathy scale. They identified about 20 songs that seemed to be particularly popular or unpopular depending on the listener’s level of psychopathy.
The researchers then ran the numbers in the opposite direction. They had other students listen to those songs with the highest correlations to the psychopathy scale and rate the songs. The students’ reactions to the songs predicted to some extent their own scores on the psychopathy scale. The study hasn’t been published in a peer-reviewed journal, and like all early studies may not hold up, but it was presented at the Society for Neuroscience meeting that is being held in Washington this week with about 30,000 attendees.
Among the songs with the highest correlation were Eminem’s “Lose Yourself,” the Academy and Grammy award-winning rap song popularized in the 2002 movie “8 Mile,” and Blackstreet’s “No Diggity,” which ousted “Macarena” for Billboard’s top spot in 1996. Justin Bieber’s “What Do You Mean” was also popular with those students who scored high on the psychopathy scale. On the low end were Dire Straits’ “Money for Nothing,” the much-covered country tune “Wayward Wind” and The Knack’s 1979 pop-rock hit, “My Sharona.”
Here is where I would drop a witty line referencing a Justin Bieber lyric, but I don’t know any.
Read the rest from The Washington Post here.
