TY - JOUR
T1 - Implicit violent imagery processing among fans and non-fans of music with violent themes
AU - Sun, Yanan
AU - Lu, Xuejing
AU - Williams, Mark
AU - Thompson, William Forde
N1 - Funding Information:
Ethics. All participants provided their written informed consent and received payments or course credit points for their time. This study was carried out in accordance with approved guidelines of the National Statement on Ethical Conduct in Human Research (2007). Ethical approval was obtained from the Ethics Committee of Macquarie University (reference no. 5201600580). Data accessibility. The dataset supporting this article has been deposited at the Dryad Digital Repository: http://dx.doi. org/10.5061/dryad.kq487nj [84]. Authors’ contributions. W.F.T., X.L. and M.W. conceived and designed the experiment. X.L. programmed the binocular rivalry task. Y.S. and X.L. collected the data. Y.S. analysed the data. Y.S. and X.L. wrote up the first draft of the manuscript. Y.S., W.F.T. and M.W. interpreted the data. Y.S. and X.L. contributed equally to the research. Competing interests. We declare we have no competing interests. Funding. This research was supported by an Australian Research Council Discovery Project grant no. (DP160101470) awarded to W.F.T. Acknowledgements. We thank members of the Macquarie University Music, Sound and Performance Research Group for helpful comments on an earlier draft. We also thank Dr Fei Yi for her assistance in coding the experiment.
Publisher Copyright:
© 2019 The Authors.
PY - 2019/3/1
Y1 - 2019/3/1
N2 - It is suggested that long-Term exposure to violent media may decrease sensitivity to depictions of violence. However, it is unknown whether persistent exposure to music with violent themes affects implicit violent imagery processing. Using a binocular rivalry paradigm, we investigated whether the presence of violent music influences conscious awareness of violent imagery among fans and non-fans of such music. Thirty-Two fans and 48 non-fans participated in the study. Violent and neutral pictures were simultaneously presented one to each eye, and participants indicated which picture they perceived (i.e. violent percept, neutral percept or blend of two) via key presses, while they heard Western popular music with lyrics that expressed happiness or Western extreme metal music with lyrics that expressed violence. We found both fans and non-fans of violent music exhibited a general negativity bias for violent imagery over neutral imagery regardless of the music genres. For non-fans, this bias was stronger while listening to music that expressed violence than while listening to music that expressed happiness. For fans of violent music, however, the bias was the same while listening to music that expressed either violence or happiness. We discussed these results in viewof current debates on the impact of violent media.
AB - It is suggested that long-Term exposure to violent media may decrease sensitivity to depictions of violence. However, it is unknown whether persistent exposure to music with violent themes affects implicit violent imagery processing. Using a binocular rivalry paradigm, we investigated whether the presence of violent music influences conscious awareness of violent imagery among fans and non-fans of such music. Thirty-Two fans and 48 non-fans participated in the study. Violent and neutral pictures were simultaneously presented one to each eye, and participants indicated which picture they perceived (i.e. violent percept, neutral percept or blend of two) via key presses, while they heard Western popular music with lyrics that expressed happiness or Western extreme metal music with lyrics that expressed violence. We found both fans and non-fans of violent music exhibited a general negativity bias for violent imagery over neutral imagery regardless of the music genres. For non-fans, this bias was stronger while listening to music that expressed violence than while listening to music that expressed happiness. For fans of violent music, however, the bias was the same while listening to music that expressed either violence or happiness. We discussed these results in viewof current debates on the impact of violent media.
UR - http://www.scopus.com/inward/record.url?scp=85064230823&partnerID=8YFLogxK
U2 - 10.1098/rsos.181580
DO - 10.1098/rsos.181580
M3 - Article
AN - SCOPUS:85064230823
SN - 2054-5703
VL - 6
JO - Royal Society Open Science
JF - Royal Society Open Science
IS - 3
M1 - 181580
ER -
