Sometimes, you read a piece of research that really makes you sad, but sometimes, you read a piece of research that makes you smile and laugh- this is one of the blogs!
This week, a piece of research came out that really spoke to my soul (and, in particular, the teenager in me!)- the study comes from America, but is equally valid in the UK. As a teenager, and even now, I was heavily in to the ‘Alternative scene’. I didn’t listen to pop music, I listened to Grunge, Metal and Goth music, and the music seemed to offer a sort of peace of mind- I wasn’t the only person who thought this way. In fact, despite outward appearances and behaviours, I was actually really quite normal (if there can be such a thing as normal!).
So, the team in the USA wanted to find out- did the Heavy Metal kids from the 1980’s go on to lead a happy life? The back story to this study started, I guess, in the 1970’s with the birth of Heavy Metal music- bands like Black Sabbath, Deep Purple and Kiss had come to the forefront and exploded out of our stereo’s. Common myths were expounded at the time- if you played Sabbath’s records backwards, you would get a message from the devil! Now, we know that this is not the case, but back in the 1970’s and 1980’s, people genuinely feared for the sanity and the health of ‘Heavy Metallers’. They were seen as Satanists, or Occultists, and that no good would ever come of them and all they were trying to do was to get one over on ‘Big Brother’.
However, in reality, if you were in to this scene, you would know that this wasn’t true- the music was an escape for a lot of people, for the bad things that were going on in their lives. It gave people, who, like me, were ‘different’, somewhere to come together with likeminded people, talk, party, socialise and have something in common. To us, we were the normal ones, and the ‘norms’ were all weird!
So, back to the study- what did happen to those 80’s Metallers, and are they still living their Satanically demonic, drug-fuelled lifestyles? Well, the answer seems to be quite clear- the study from Humbolt State University utilised Social Media, to get together a group of 99 fans of Metal music, 20 musicians and around 20 ‘groupies’ (usually women, but sometimes men, who followed the groups around) and used a control group of a similar age, who were in to pop music, how their lives had turned out (Howe et al., 2015).
The heavy metal fans and groupies, but not musicians, reported that during their childhood they experienced more adverse childhood experiences than the control group did, with the groupies being particularly prone to suicidal tendencies. So, what does this tell us? Well, it tells us that the fans of metal music could have been drawn to the music because of the underlying themes of the music and the tone of the music, which seemed to tie in with their real-life experiences- life being dark, serious, moody and challenging; quite unlike the airy-fairiness of pop music.
The cohort of the study were examined against controls of attachment In their adult years (how well they form and keep personal relationships), the Big Five personality traits (openness, conscientiousness, extraversion, agreeableness, and neuroticism) and how this interacts with their personalities and how they function with them. Comparing the control group with the test group found that there was really not much difference between the two groups, psychologically- despite the Metal groups early childhood difficulties.
So, what about now? How are they dealing with life now? Well, believe it or not, the Metallers actually feel as content in their lives as the ‘norm’ group, but, crucially enough, the Metallers actually recalled being significantly happier in their youths and only one third of the metal group expressed any regrets in their lives, whereas in the control ‘norm’ group, at least half of them actually expressed regrets over their lives, and this group actually had a higher occurrence of commencing counselling for emotional problems.
So, what this seems to suggest to us is that by listening to Metal music, the test group actually managed to get through their tumultuous teenage years, fairing better than their ‘norm’ counterparts. Perhaps this does lend weight to the belief that the music allows its listeners a sense of freedom, a sense of being understood and a sense of catharsis about their lives, allowing for the free expression of their emotions and creating an outlet for the frustrations of adolescence.
One of the most interesting parts of the study was that the Metal musicians actually did better in this study than their counterparts- that actually implies the idea that the musician group of the cohort were actually highly functioning. This means that the musicians decided what they wanted in life and pursued their goals until they successfully completed their ambitions, thus making a career out of a ‘hobby’ that they were incredibly passionate about. Which, just goes to show that, if you have a past time that you truly love and are completely passionate about, if you follow your dreams, you probably will be a lot happier than your peers and counterparts.
One word of warning though- a third of the musicians went on to contract an STD during their lives, which, when accepting that they averaged over 300 sexual partners each, doesn’t seem to be much of a surprise! Remember kids- always practice safe sex!
I guess that the lesson here is, just because you don’t like it, don’t understand it, or don’t agree with it, doesn’t make it wrong. We are all different, and different things make us happy, elated, confident and strive to make the most out of our lives. Even if it does mean we suffer neck ache when we are dancing!
n.b I am away training next week, so I am thinking of changing the blog posting day- Don’t be surprised to see a post earlier in the week!
Howe, T., Aberson, C., Friedman, H., Murphy, S., Alcazar, E., Vazquez, E. and Becker, R. (2015) ‘Three Decades Later: The Life Experiences and Mid-Life Functioning of 1980s Heavy Metal Groupies, Musicians, and Fans’, Self and Identity, vol. 1, no. 25, May.
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