Do you find yourself putting Blackstreet’s seminal 1996 jam “No Diggity” on every playlist you make? Do you love Eminem’s “Lose Yourself”? If so, congratulations! You might be a psychopath.
That, according to Pascal Wallisch, a clinical assistant professor of psychology at New York University, who might find himself regretting releasing his preliminary study on the connection between music and psychopathy.
Wallisch told the Daily News that he tested 260 highly recognizable songs and found that 30 showed promise for predicting whether someone was a total fucking psycho, including the two aforementioned. And while he made sure to specify that his study was song-specific, and not genre-specific — lest you think psychos only listen to rap — he did think that psychopaths’ heightened need for stimulation may lead to a preference for beat-heavy songs.
But before you go deleting all of your favorite mp3s, Wallisch reiterated that the study is merely in its preliminary phase, saying “I’m not 100 percent sure of this. What we’re doing now, we’re in the process of adding more songs and more people to confirm if this is true. We want to replicate this before we publish it.” (Phew, because “No Diggity” is a banger, and I refuse to believe I’m a psychopath just because I like it.)
Wallisch, however, believes that his completed study will demonstrate the connection between certain songs and psychopathy. He’s hoping that if all goes well in peer review his research could be used to screen applicants for high-power jobs, such as law enforcement.
No word yet on whether liking Gwar is an automatic fail.
A few other things we learned about our bodies today:
- Humans are surprisingly bad at trimming their pubes; 25 percent of us have injured our junk in the process, and 1.5 percent even ended up hospitalized.
- There’s hope for smokers: Simply quitting may be all it takes to reverse lung damage caused by long-term smoke inhalation.
- Drinking beer makes you happy, say the honest dealers at the Daily Mail.
- You’re not married because you’re poor.
- Entomb your suitcase in plastic to prevent bringing home bedbugs from that pay-by-the-hour motel.
- In today’s “no, duh” news, if you’re recovering from depression and don’t want to relapse, make more friends.
Jeff Gross
Jeff Gross is MEL’s senior editor for social media and content marketing. His daily ICYMI column, which chronicles all things meta on the site, is the quickest way to catch up on MEL, and the funniest thing you’ll read all day. Follow him on Twitter.
