ABSTRACT

Claims for the positive effects of popular music abound. For example, we often hear that "music soothes the savage beast" or "music has powerful healing powers." On the other hand, social critics commonly lambast popular music for its alleged negative effects, claiming that the "savage jungle beat" creates unrest among the teenage natives or that "music takes control of your body" or "makes you lose your mind." For each generation, a new iteration of popular music creates new allegations of antisocial effects. Jazz, ragtime, swing, rock and roll, punk, rap, and grunge are examples of types of music that appealed to the young and offended the more conservative or older members of the society. In this chapter we consider whether particular outcomes are associated with the preference for, or exposure to, various forms of music. The critical question guiding this synthesis of the literature becomes what the available literature, when properly synthesized, demonstrates about the impact of music on various social outcomes. For the purpose of this chapter the term social behaviors and attitudes refers to academic success, attitudes toward violence, aggression, sexual intercourse, use of illegal drugs, delinquency, and vandalism as well as beliefs about issues such as Satanism, the occult, racism, date rape, and rebellion against social rules. An antisocial behav-

ior or attitude occurs when the individual accepts, endorses, or engages in action that is illegal, self-destructive, or destructive to property or another person or fails to accept, endorse, or engage in a action that would be considered prosocial (e.g., succeeding in school and avoiding situations involving risk). The definition carries a strong sense of conventionality and some outcomes (such as violence against persons) are more clearly antisocial and less acceptable than other outcomes considered undesirable (endorsing voodoo as a desirable practice). Any definition of this type introduces an evaluative sense for the attitudes and behaviors that endorses conventional or mainstream elements of social judgments made about adolescents and defines the parameters of acceptable behavior.