The Threatening Nature of " Rap " Music

Journal of Experimental Criminology, 2018

Objectives: In criminal cases, prosecutors treat defendant-authored rap lyrics as an admission of guilt rather than as art or entertainment. Do negative stereotypes about rap music shape jurors’ attitudes about the defendant, unfairly influencing outcomes? Replicating and extending previous research (Fischoff Journal of Applied Social Psychology, 29(4), 795-805, 1999; Fried Journal of Applied Social Psychology, 26(23), 2135-2146, 1996; Dunbar et al. Public Policy, and Law, 22(3), 280-292, 2016), the current study begins to address these questions. Methods: Using an experimental approach, participants were presented with music lyrics and asked to make judgments about the person who wrote the lyrics. All participants read the same lyrics but were told they were from a country, heavy metal, or rap song, depending upon the condition into which they were randomly assigned. Again using random assignment, participants were provided with information about the race of the songwriter in a photo of a young man. Finally, participants were tasked with judging the character of the songwriter, including traits such as his violent nature and criminal disposition. Results: We find that writers of violent “rap” lyrics are perceived more negatively than writers who pen identical country and heavy metal lyrics. We also find that songwriter race matters; no differences in judgments were detected between the White and Black songwriters; however, when race information was not provided, participants who inferred the songwriter was Black judged him more negatively than participants who inferred he was White. Conclusions: These findings have implications for racial disparities in the criminal justice system.

2021 Autumn SEMPRE conference: Engaging and Interacting with Education, Music and Psychology Research, 2021

Rap music is disproportionately associated with criminality and negative personality traits relative to other genres and that these biases may be influenced by racial- and gender-based stereotypes. The present research is a replication-extension of Fischoff’s (1999) study, which examined potential jurors’ perceptions of a male gangsta-rap lyricist on trial for murder. We examined whether a description of a hypothetical rap music fan will (1) receive more negative personality ratings and associations with criminality when presented alongside inflammatory rap lyrics and (2) whether the gender of the rap fan influences these ratings.

Recent scholarship has shed light on the troubling use of rap lyrics in criminal trials. Prosecutors have interpreted defendants' rap lyrics as accurate descriptions of past behavior or in some cases as real threats of violence. There are at least two problems with this practice: One concerns the interpretation of art in a legalistic context and the second involves the targeting of rap over other genres and the role of racism therein. The goal of the present work is translational, to demonstrate the relevance of music scholarship on this topic to criminologists and legal experts. We highlight the usage of lyric formulas, stock lyrical topics understood by musicians and their audiences , many of which make sense only in the context of a given genre. The popularity of particular lyric formulas at particular times appears connected to con-temporaneous social conditions. In African American music, these formulas have a long history, from blues, through rock and roll, to contemporary rap music. The work illustrates this through textual analyses of lyrics identifying common formulas and connecting them to relevant social factors, in order to demonstrate that fictionalized accounts of violence form the stock-in-trade of rap and should not be interpreted literally.

Psychology of Women Quarterly, 1997

Theoretical Criminology

This article draws on governance theory, critical theory and cultural criminology to interrogate how legal, social scientific and feminist discourses converge to construct rap music as a pressing social problem. While each discourse has its own preoccupations, ideologies and internal contestation, the overarching message is that rap music is a potential source of danger that conveys anti-social attitudes. Suspicion is sometimes also cast on musicians themselves. While I compare three overlapping fields, the ultimate purpose is to problematize the supposedly progressive approach to interpreting and mobilizing against songs deemed harmful. Significantly, I argue that much of the social science scholarship and feminist activism that addresses hip hop music perpetuates anti-Black stereotypes and dovetails with repressive state apparatuses. Among other things, social science and feminist criticism of rap hermeneutically support the use of rap lyrics as evidence of criminality—a distinctl...

Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 2003

Five experiments examined effects of songs with violent lyrics on aggressive thoughts and hostile feelings. Experiments 1, 3, 4 and 5 demonstrated that college students who heard a violent song felt more hostile than those who heard a similar but nonviolent song. Experiments 2–5 demonstrated a similar increase in aggressive thoughts. These effects replicated across songs and song types (e.g.,

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2024

https://www.erudit.org/fr/revues/cs/2023-n5-cs09188/1110133ar/