Hey, let me ask you this: do you like Justin Bieber? If the answer’s yes, it’s cool. Plenty of people do.
But hey, let me also ask you: have you ever felt capable of homicide? ‘Cause it turns out ‘Beliebers’ are statistically more inclined to than, say, a Bruno Mars fan. Sad!
Yep, in a new study conducted by New York University psychology professor, Pascal Wallisch and recent graduate Nicole Leal, Justin Bieber fans are psychopaths.
Well… not exactly. They’re not saying anyone who throws shapes to Where Are U Now on a weekend is one click away from killing a puppy for fun but rather his music correlates with psychopathy.
Check out the clip below of Selena Gomez dishing the dirt on the What Do You Mean singer:
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In their study, Wallisch and Leal gave 190 NYU psychology students questionnaires with statements such as ‘For me what’s right is whatever I can get away with,’ and ‘Love is overrated.’
After the survey was completed, the students listened to a series of songs, varying in genre and were asked to rate them on a scale from one to seven.
Wallisch and Leal then looked for correlations between their song preferences and scores on the test.
Songs’ like Justin Bieber’s, What Do You Mean. Eminem’s Lose Yourself and Blackstreet’s No Diggity, showed the largest correlation, reports the Washington Post.
On the opposite end were Dire Straits’ Money for Nothing and The Knack’s My Sharona.
Speaking of psychopathy, take a look at this riddle and see what you think you’d do:
A runaway trolley is about to run over and kill five people and you are standing on a footbridge next to a large stranger; your body is too light to stop the train, but if you push the stranger onto the tracks, killing him, you will save the five people.
Would you push the man?
Your instinct is yes. Sacrifice one person for five people, but you could argue, ‘that one person might be a Nazi so it’s worth it?’
True, yet the five others could be Nazis? Or worse, one half of a derivative breakdancing group on their way to audition for Britain’s Got Talent.
Although there’s a lot of context needed for the answer, generally speaking, if you choose to murder the man, you have higher scores on measures of psychopathy, Machiavellianism and life meaninglessness according to a study published in Science Direct.
However, co-author, Professor Daniel Bartels, a teacher at New York’s Columbia University, states there are flaws in this test.
He said in a press release:
Although the study does not resolve the ethical debate, it points to a flaw in the widely-adopted use of sacrificial dilemmas to identify optimal moral judgement.
These methods fail to distinguish between people who endorse utilitarian moral choices because of underlying emotional deficits (like those captured by our measures of psychopathy and Machiavellianism) and those who endorse them out of genuine concern for the welfare of others.
Have a fantastic week!
