Study- Heavy Metal Helps Fans Deal With Mortality

Fabian Samuel

Introduction• Fabian Samuel co-created the League of Extraordinary Gamers, a

console and PC gaming center in Bangalore, India. A fan of multiple musical genres, Fabian Samuel particularly enjoys heavy metal music. To the outsider, heavy metal may seem like a bunch of long-haired, tattooed men screaming their heads off about death, but a new study finds the genre helps listeners deal with their own mortality.

The study, published in the Journal of Psychology of Popular Media, took 30 metal fans and first had them complete a questionnaire designed to gauge their comfort with the idea of death. Next, the researchers had them write about their own death before dividing them into two groups. While the first listened to Slayer’s Angel of Death or Black Sabbath’s Paranoid, the second group listened to an unrelated audio book.

Heavy Metal• After, researchers again gauged each participant’s comfort with

mortality.

The results, according to the researchers, indicate that those who listened to metal music were more comfortable with the concept of their own mortality, while those listening to the audio book grew increasingly uncomfortable after having to write about their own death. A second study, this time using a mixture of metal fans and those who were not metal fans, found that while metal fans were okay after the study, non-metal fans needed an additional self-esteem boost.

While the outside world may misunderstand your musical tastes and think it is all about death, science shows it helps you deal with the concepts of death and mortality.