Listening to Degrading Music – the Road to Pre Marital Sex?
August 15th, 2006 by Stephen
A recent study by Rand Corporation claims to have found that adolescents who listen to a great deal of music with degrading sexual content have sex sooner.
The survey attempts to control for other factors, such as personal and social factors, and claims to show a strong correlation between the degrading music being listened to for both sexes and all races.
Is this correlation or causation though? It is fallacious to suggest that because people have sex earlier after listening to such songs that it is therefore the songs that cause this behaviour (even if the study does control for other factors), but it is certainly possible that such lyrics affect the behaviour of listeners.
It is also possible that the decision to listen to such music tells us something about the morality and ethics of the listener. That it is not the music that causes the behaviour, but the ethics that affect musical taste.
And are we surprised by this survey at all? Didn’t we know that the our society treats premarital sex as the norm, and that conformists in our society will both listen to the depraved musical selections they are spoon fed by industry supported “rebels”, and also buy into the belief that surely everyone will have sex before they are married?
