Violence and Aggression

Transcript

• 00:01

  [DRUMMING]

• 00:51

  [SINGING AND DRUMMING]

• 01:40

  All races, all colors, all creeds got the same needs.And even which leads to pain, leads to flame.International shame on a global scale.People living in hell.

Across the ages and across countries, soldiers and citizens alike have sung war songs and ballads of violent feats. In the social and behavioral sciences, however, research on violent music has primarily focused on modern music in Western countries. Although violent and aggressive themes are common in some modern Western genres (e.g., heavy metal, death metal, and rap), such themes are generally uncommon in popular music as a whole, although they have been increasing in recent years. Listening to violent music is neither sufficient nor necessary to elicit acts of community violence or self-harm (a confluence of risk factors is necessary for these to occur), but has been linked to short-term increases in aggressive thoughts, feelings, and behaviors in experimental research. Longer-term impacts, such as increases in trait aggression and antisocial behaviors, have also been found, but are most typical in people with existing psychological issues, who are also drawn to music with violent and aggressive themes.

The term human aggression always refers to a behavior, although it is often erroneously interchangeably used with terms such as “anger” (an emotion) and “hostility” (a mindset with an emotional substrate). Aggression refers to a behavior that is intended to harm another, and which the target is motivated to avoid. It may involve physically harming another, emotionally harming another with words, or indirectly harming another through sabotaging their relationships and reputation, or damaging their property. Violence is usually conceptualized as a subtype of physically aggressive behavior, which has the goal of causing extreme harm or death to another.