Brainiacs Prefer Heavy Metal

[MetDream]

Brainiacs prefer heavy metal
Study shows it takes pressure off gifted students

Tom Spears, CanWest News Service
Published: Friday, March 23, 2007

The most gifted teenagers often love heavy metal music because it relieves the pressure of being smart, says a British psychologist who has boosted the images of bright kids and metalheads together.

Stuart Cadwallader is getting thanks from all directions after his cliche-shattering data, announced this week at a psychology conference in England.

The gifted students are relieved not to be seen as clarinet-toting Mozart-lovers. The metalheads are pleased that someone, for a change, isn't calling them all losers.

And the heavy-on-guitar and big-on-drum anthems are getting some respect in the academic community.

Cadwallader is happy, too. He's a PhD student at the University of Warwick. "This was my master's project. I was expecting it to be read by about three people," he said in an interview.

How wrong he was. His findings that about one-third of gifted teenagers enjoy heavy metal perked up a conference that otherwise had topics along the lines of: "Toward a meta-methodology of qualitative research."

A few years back, the psychology student was reading an article about how music tastes relate to a person's identity. His university is home to the National Academy for Gifted and Talented Youth, for students ranked in the top five per cent academically.

Cadwallader surveyed 1,057 boys and girls aged 11 to 18 there, asking about their emotions, families, interests and musical tastes. The results: Six per cent of the gifted kids chose heavy metal as their favorite music.

And a full third of them rated it among their top several styles, along with the universally popular rock and pop.

"I ended up studying heavy metal because I think it's so incongruous with the stereotype of gifted youth listening to classical music, spending all their time reading," he said. "Quite a fun stereotype to dispel a little bit."

There's a tradition of viewing Iron Maiden and Metallica fans as delinquents who do badly in school, and this turns out to be untrue, he adds.

"Heavy metal can be scary for adults, or for people who don't appreciate it . . . It can sound very aggressive."

But this music actually relaxes many of the study's teenagers. It releases anger and frustration -- feelings that many blamed on the pressures and expectations that come from being labelled as gifted.

"They spoke specifically about using heavy metal for catharsis, literally using the loud and often aggressive music to 'jump out' frustrations and anger," Cadwallader writes in a summary of the results.

And the survey's findings on classical music?

"It was the least popular genre," he said.
© The Calgary Herald 2007


http://www.canada.com/topics/bodyandhea ... aa&k=70277

[Judge B]

Nothing new here. All university geeks are heavy metal dudes mostly.

[Toxic Avenger]

Was kind of strange reading this. Most of the metal people I've had the displeasure of meeting were total Beavis & Butt-Head types, meaning they all think they are SO much better than anyone else because they listen to Metal. When I was in school there was not one metalhead who was close to being anything like a decent student. But maybe they were just all too intelligent for school and acted like idiots to show their disapproval....well, no, I think not.

That's the kind of article many of the above-mentioned moron-types will cite to death and think they're really clever for it. Even though it doesn't say anything about them, only about gifted children who prefer Metal among (and not solely and above everything else, like most metalheads) their favorite kinds of music. So, if these kids weren't exceedingly intelligent, the same people who now say "they belong to us" would call them poseurs.

[Bert Jan]

Six per cent of the gifted kids chose heavy metal as their favorite music.

Isnt that a little less to base a conclusion like that one? Or have I missed something in the article?

[fey-metallica]

Yes you are: "And a full third of them rated it among their top several styles"

[OutlawTorn81]

I love it!

I'm the only person I know that has an M.A. AND an autographed Metallica So What! book on his wall! There has to be a correlation!

[minus clover]

my daughter is a metalhead (takes after her mother, poor thing...) and her iq is well over 180... so there ya go!

[wolfway]

over 180 she's like a fucking genious? mine is 142 and they already told me that was very gifted and that i should be very happy

[Judge B]

Sounds like minus clover's daughter is Einstein or something....

[minus clover]

nah, she isnt einstein, just a very gifted kid who doesnt know what she wants from life. she turns 21 on saturday... makes me feel old...