• Music plays a huge role in a person's life from a very early age. It can affect our overall attitude in unconscious ways, amplifying feelings that we have nurtured from a very early age. Heavy metal music has been linked to violent crime as well as rebellious attitudes, but arguments do exist that it has no real effect on our overall behavior. In order to determine which aspects of this style of music play a role in our attitudes, we must look at the research completed and published on this subject.
  
  

School Performance

• There have been correlations made between poor school performance and heavy metal music. In a study conducted by Christenson and van Nouhuys in 1995 and published in the Journal of Clinical Psychology, teens who listened to heavy metal had more conflicts with teachers than those who often listened to more mainstream selections. Heavy metal contains violent messages and often misogynist undertones as well. Overall, poor school performance was more prevalent in students who chose to listen to heavy metal than any other type of music.
  
  

Home Life

• Those who listen to heavy metal are prone to conflict at home as well as in the classroom. A study conducted in 1993 by Martin, Clarke, & Pearce, researchers from Australia who conducted studies on high school students and whose findings were published in 1993 in the Journal of the American Academy of Child and Adolescent Psychiatry, concluded that those adolescents who listened to heavy metal had more conflicts at home with their parents and siblings. They were more hostile than the average child and were often rebellious.
  
  

College Life

• Those seeking to appear more masculine and aggressive have gravitated toward heavy metal music for its overt sexist stance and violent tendencies in a study of college students. Researchers such as Hansen and Hansen, whose work on this subject has been published in the Journal of Broadcasting and Electronic Media in the early 1990s, noted that exposure to heavy metal led to hypersexuality, including the coercion of women into sex and the glorification of violent themes. Those who listened to heavy metal in college did not turn into rebellious people, but rebellious people were drawn to the themes seen in this style of music.
  
  

Summary

• Overall, heavy metal has some influence over behaviors, and a person's attitude will influence him to embrace a certain style of music rather than the music influencing him to act a particular way. Those who listen to heavy metal have a lust for thrills and a penchant to seek experiences that are considered risky, according to J. Arnett in a study published in the Journal of Youth and Adolescence in 1991.