Enjoy The Song “No Diggity?” You Are More Likely To Be A Psychopath
There’s always a stereotype in films that the murderous psychopath always listens to classical music. However, in new research, people who scored highly on psychopath tests are more preferential to Blackstreet’s cult classic “No Diggity.”
The study originally started with UK’s Channel 4 questioning over 3 million participants, to see what genres of music were most popular with people of a more psychopathic nature - finding that they are more likely to favour rap and heavy metal, with the least psychopathic liking classical and jazz.
This was picked up by researchers at New York University, who looked deeper into specific songs, and studied 200 people. In the work, they found that people who scored higher percentages on psychopath tests liked the aforementioned “No Diggity” and “Lose yourself” by Eminem. On the other end of the spectrum, “Titanium” by Sia and “My Sharona” by The Knacks were loved by the least psychopathic people.
However, with this link to Channel 4’s study, it should not be taken that psychopathic people only like rap. This is the story perpetrated by the likes of The Daily Mail in their work to create a more dramatic piece that fits into their right-leaning “all rap is bad” audience of Facebook mums.
“As far as I can tell, there is no such link, I have never asserted there to be one and I am unsure as to the evidentiary basis of such a link at this point,” Pascal Wallisch, lead researcher commented on his blog.
“The beauty of this idea is you can use it as a screening test without consent, cooperation or maybe even the knowledge of the people involved,” he continued in an interview with The Guardian. “The ethics of this are very hairy, but so is having a psychopath as a boss, and so is having a psychopath in any position of power.”
Scientists refused to name the other songs on their list, as to not disrupt any future experiments using these songs. My bet is on “Despacito” being a frontrunner for turning you into a psychopath.
Of course, do not take this as gospel. You absolutely should not diagnose yourself based on music taste (my choice of metal would seriously put me at jeopardy). You can give yourself a rough test using the Hare Psychopathy Checklist.
