title: The impact of suicidal rock music lyrics on youth: an investigation of individual differences.
abstract: This study attempted to predict reactions after listening to music with lyrics about suicide. One hundred and twenty-six volunteers completed self-reports of personality and mood, and then listened to the music. Afterwards, they completed projective stories, self-reports of moods and reactions, and a memory test for the lyrics. Low openness to experience, and to a lesser extent, high neuroticism and low self-esteem predicted higher levels of suicide-related content in projective story-writing, as did knowing a suicide victim. Both the personality measures and post-listening mood predicted remembering too many nihilistic lyrics. Surprisingly, 68% of participants wrote at least one projective story with altruistic content. Individual differences were modestly associated with suicidal thoughts after listening to the music.
authors.affiliation: The Catholic University of America, Washington, DC, USA. rebshadow@aol.com
authors.forename: Rebecca J
authors.initials: RJ
authors.lastname: Peterson
authors.forename: Martin A
authors.initials: MA
authors.lastname: Safer
authors.forename: David A
authors.initials: DA
authors.lastname: Jobes
mesh_terms: D000293:Adolescent; D000328:Adult; D000339:Affect; D003071:Cognition; D005260:Female; D006379:Helping Behavior; D006801:Humans; D008297:Male; D009146:Music; D012660:Semantics; D013405:Suicide; D011795:Surveys and Questionnaires; D014825:Vocabulary