Rock Music Videos and Antisocial Behavior

An experiment was conducted to test the effects of rock music videos on impressions of a man subsequently seen performing an antisocial act. After neutral music videos, impressions of the target were more negative when he made an obscene gesture toward a female experimenter than when he did not. After videos containing antisocial content, the antisocial act had a negligible, if not opposite, effect on impressions. Results and implications are discussed in terms of social-cognitive theories of information processing.