New Study Implies Rock Music Makes White People Racist
A recent study conducted by the University of Minnesota has found that after rocking out, white folks get all chummy with other white folks while giving other races the cold shoulder.
Researchers at the University of Minnesota have discovered some startling results in their most recent study on the effects of music. According to the Daily Mail [via NME], 138 students listened to different types of music for seven minutes each, after each listen they were tasked with distributing money to different ethnic groups.
The results showed that after listening to The White Stripes and Bruce Springsteen, white students favored their own in front of others. “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 a university spokeswoman. “That was enough for them to show more support for a student group representing mostly whites.”
Apparently that sentiment was amplified after the white students listened to white power group like Prussian Blue and Bound for Glory — the same was not true of non-white participants. “We saw very targeted, almost punitive take-aways from the African-American and Arab-American groups by those who listened to the radical white power rock,” said associate professor Silvia Knobloch-Westerwick. “Music has a lot of power to influence our thoughts and actions, more than we often recognize. It has the power to reinforce our positive biases toward our own group, and sometimes negative biases toward others.”
Whether or not these results would hold true in a larger study or one conducted in a more racially diverse locale remains to be determined, nonetheless, it’s an interesting topic of conversation.