An innovative James Cook University experiment has found rap-related cues shape how people judge a hypothetical fan accused of violent crime, raising questions about the use of lyrics as evidence in court.
James Cook University psychology senior lecturer Amanda Krause, who coauthored the study, said almost half of the top 50 most-streamed artists are classified as hip-hop or rap.
"We see all the time in the media that people are concerned about the lyrical content of rap songs," said Dr Krause.
"Relative to other musical genres, it frequently features themes of violence, misogyny, alcohol and drug use and depictions of women as objects of sexual gratification."
She said previous research shows rap stereotyping extends to negative views of rap performers, with US prosecutors using defendant-authored rap lyrics in criminal trials as effective evidence of character, motive and intent.
"We wanted to see if the negative inferences associated with rap lyricists such as sexual aggressiveness and criminality also extended to rap fans," said Dr Krause.
The researchers performed two studies. In the first, 300 people were asked to judge how capable of murder and sexually aggressive an accused rap fan was when rap lyrics were included in the information provided about the accused.
"The inclusion of the rap lyrics increased judgments that the fan was capable of murder and was linked to higher ratings of sexual aggression," said Dr Krause.
In the second study 504 people judged the accused fan whose musical tastes were still in the rap style but not explicitly branded as rap.
"In this study we found that those study participants with a more positive attitude toward rap gave lower ratings of both murder capability and sexual aggression," said Dr Krause.
She said it appears that perceived rap stereotypes are very powerful, outweighing positive attributes included in the fan's biographical description when panellists judged their character.
"Courts may wish to consider the artistic conventions and social context of rap," said Dr Krause.
"There may be a role for public education to counter media-driven 'problem music' narratives and to reduce pre-emptive policing practices that disproportionately target rap subgenres."
The research was published in Psychology of Music and can be accessed at https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/full/10.1177/03057356261424252
