Does Liking Rap Music Make You Stupid?

Does liking rap music dull your intelligence? No. But it may indicate that your intelligence is already dull.

Like the Americans, the British teens who scored high marks for intelligence were more likely than their peers to prefer instrumental music, but no more likely to enjoy vocal selections.

Now, Beethoven symphonies are far more complex than pop songs, so an obvious explanation for these findings is that smarter people crave more complicated music. But Kanazawa doesn’t think that’s right. His crunching of the data suggests that preference for big-band music “is even more positively correlated” with high intelligence than classical compositions.

“It would be difficult to make the case that big-band music is more cognitively complex than classical music,” he writes. “On the other extreme, as suspected, preference for rap music is significantly negatively correlated with intelligence. However, preference for gospel music is even more strongly negatively correlated with it.

So what is the point of this post? I'm hoping that brain power snobbery will kill off rap. I hate that crap.

And for you gospel music lovers? What can I say? Anyway here is some brain music.





Cross Posted at Classical Values