More Than Just Screaming: The Effect Alternative Rock Has on Teens
Anger, aggression, depression, fear, these are all emotions associated with alternative rock music and this has caused quite a fight between listeners and skeptics. The original alternative music; rock’n’roll was believed to be make teenagers less moral while today the belief is rock‘n’roll’s descendant, alternative rock, is causing increasing levels of depression, anxiety, and aggression in teenagers. Mental illness, specifically depression and anxiety, have been on the rise for several decades and suicide has been a leading cause of death; which has made parents desperate to keep their children safe. Social scientists have spent considerable energy trying to help by answering the question, is alternative helping or hurting our youth? Shafron and Karno’s “Heavy Metal and Emotional Dysphoria Among Listeners” showed a clear connection between the personality trait pyschoticism and listeners of alternative rock. Miranda and Claes “Music Listening, Coping, Peer Affiliation, and Depression in Adolescents” argue that levels of depression is dependent on coping mechanisms. The consensus is that though there is a clear correlation between higher levels of emotional dysphoria and listening to alternative rock music, the effect the music has on listeners is dependent on way the music is used to cope.
In Gavin Shafron and Mitchell Karno’s “Heavy Metal and Emotional Dysphoria Among Listeners” Shafron and Karno surveyed over 500 students about their music tastes and emotions over the last few weeks to gain their conclusion to the effect of metal music. Their study found significantly higher levels of emotional dysphoria among students who labeled themselves as alternative rock listeners. One of the insights the study showed was alternative rock listeners have higher levels of Eynseck and Eynseck’s personality trait psychoticism. Despite its name, psychoticism has nothing to do with psychopathy, psychoticism is defined as tough-mindedness and causes people to be more impulsive, aggressive, anti-authority, creative, and is linked to higher likelihood of being diagnosed with a psychotic disorder. Though Shafron and Karno have proved there is definite correlation between emotional dysphoria and listening to alternative rock, their study does not prove causation.
Dave Miranda and Michael Claes took Shafron and Karno’s idea a step farther and attempted to find a causing factor.. Miranda and Claes surveyed 418 adolescents in Montreal about their music preferences, how their preferences affected peer affiliation, and which of the three styles of coping they used when listening to music. They found that adolescents form peer groups based on music preferences and that due to the higher levels of emotional dysphoria in alternative rock listener, this created groups of people with similar dysphoria that in turn worsened the dysphoria for the entire group. Miranda and Claes studied the depression levels associated with three styles of coping, problem-oriented, emotion-oriented, and avoidance/disengagement as well. Problem-orientated coping is using the music to help them solve the issue, this correlated with lower levels of depression. Emotion-oriented coping focuses on using music to deal with feelings through catharsis and validation and has no correlation with higher or lower levels of depression, but was the most effective of the three at regulating mood. Avoidance/disengagement is using the music to ignore the issues all together, this correlated with the highest levels of depression.
Through these two studies, it’s clear that alternative rock has a significant correlation with emotional dysphoria, but there is no clear evidence of causation from alternative rock. Shafron and Karno concluded that the amount of time spent listening to alternative rock had no consistent correlation with levels of emotional dysphoria. If the music itself was causing emotional dysphoria the time listening to it, should increase in dysphoria form the continuous exposure the stimulus. Miranda and Clae’s study also took away from the idea that the music was causing factor, with the varying correlations depending on coping mechanism. For the music to be a causing factor, there would need to be a consistent positive correlation between depression and listening to alternative rock, but there was an inverse correlation with problem-oriented coping and no correlation with emotion-oriented coping. A difference in the strength of the positive of correlation would still have shown causation, but there being a negative correlation and no correlation makes it extremely unlikely that the music itself could be a causing factor.
Though the music may only drawing factor, not a causing one, its intensity and emotional manipulation can contribute to emotional dysphoria depending on how the listener uses it to cope and decide peer interactions. Miranda and Clae’s study confirmed that using alternative music to push the listener to focus on the actual issue helped them to solve or healthily cope with it. Their study also determined that using the angry, emotional music to express the emotion themselves helped regulate the listener’s mood, though it didn’t make any long-term progress on lowering levels of depression. On the other side, Miranda and Clae confirmed that using the music to avoid the actual causing issue or to disengage from the rest of society did make depression worse in the long term. To go along with that, Shafron and Karno found that adolescents tend to consider musical taste when forming friendship groups and that by doing this listener’s surround themselves with people with similar emotional dysphoria. Though validation and support is important for people suffering from emotional dysphoria, it’s very easy for adolescents to use these groups to focus on their emotions and not deal with them. Even when the listener doesn’t use avoidance coping with music, if they create these peer groups, they cause a similar increase in depression.
Though it may be hard for psychologists to ever truly answer the question of alternative rock as a causing factor versus a correlating one, from these two studies it can be concluded that the effect of alternative music appears dependent on the listener’s coping mechanisms more than the music itself. Of course, the psychological field is always discovering new things which means a more complete answer could be found at any time. Alternative rock is a very intense form of emotional manipulation which gives the potential to be harmful to listeners, but the potential is reached through the listener’s own decisions. Essentially, parents don’t need fear their children’s music tastes; there are many things to worrying about when dealing with an emotionally dysphoric child, but music tastes aren’t one of them.
