People who listen to Justin Bieber are quite literally psychopaths.
Okay, so that’s an extreme way of putting it, but a new study conducted by a pair of NYU graduates found that Bieber’s “What Do You Mean” was popular among students who scored high on the psychopathy scale.
According to the Washington Post, the study sought to find a correlation between preferred music genres and psychopathy, a personality disorder characterized by manipulativeness and a lack of empathy. The researchers surveyed 190 NYU psychology students and identified about 20 songs that seemed to be particularly popular or unpopular depending on the listener’s level of psychopathy.
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In addition to Bieber’s “What Do You Mean”, Eminem’s “Lose Yourself” and Blackstreet’s “No Diggity” were among the songs most popular with those students who scored highly on the psychopathy scale. On the low end of the spectrum were Dire Straits’ “Money For Nothing”, the country music staple “Wayward Wind”, and The Knacks’ “My Sharona”.
Researchers have yet to find a specific pattern in what songs are popular or unpopular with people who scored highly on the psychopath scale, though their initial hypothesis that psychopaths prefer songs without lyrics has been proven false. Their findings will be formally presented during a meeting of the Society for Neuroscience held in Washington this week.
