Time to dust off your pitchforks and raise up your fists, there’s a new university ‘study’ in town and this time they’ve got their sights on The White Stripes and Bruce Springsteen claiming listening to their music makes you racist subconsciously.
Here’s how they came to that conclusion. Participants in the University of Minnesota study were told to wait in a room while music played in the background, seven minutes later they were then called in to another room to participate in what they thought was the real study – dividing money between different ethnic-based college groups.
During their time waiting the participants were not allowed to have access to any other media, including music players, computers, phones or reading materials.
The participants were given the option to distribute their tuition money however they wished between four student groups – called the Centres of African American Studies, Latino American Studies, Arab American Studies, and Rural and Agricultural Studies.
According to The Daily Mail those that had listened to Top 40 garbage such as Akon and Gwen Stefani while in the waiting room split their funds basically evenly between the four groups, about 25 percent each.
However those who had listened to mainstream rock such as Bruce Springsteen and The White Stripes while in the waiting room gave about 35 percent of the funds to the white-American group and the remainder split evenly amongst the other three groups.
“Rock music is generally associated with white Americans, so we believe it cues white listeners to think about their positive association with their own in-group,” said Heather LaMarre, assistant professor of journalism and mass communication. “That was enough for them to show more support for a student group representing mostly whites.”
Associate professor Silvia Knobloch-Westerwick added, “Music has a lot of power to influence our thoughts and actions, more than we often recognise. It has the power to reinforce our positive biases toward our own group, and sometimes negative biases toward others.”
Knobloch-Westerwick also believes that even if rock n roll has no race-related lyrics as most mainstream songs dont, it had a strong effect implying the genre has as much effect on us as lyrical content.
“It shows that it is not just the lyrics that matter,” she said. “Good, old-fashioned rock and roll – with no incendiary or hateful lyrics at all – was enough of a cue to increase the percentage of money allocated for the white-American group.”
“This appears to be the first study to show that music genre itself, not just the lyrics, has the potential to be a very powerful influence on people.”
So what do you think, does listening to rock n roll make you favour white people? Let us know what you think in the comments below and vote in our poll.
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