Psychopaths too have a musical preference of their own. Hitchcock's Psycho doesn't fail to provide us with the chills, no matter how many times we have watched it. Hermann's Psycho soundtrack is notably his best. The music somehow matches the heart palpitations of the viewers, eagerly seated to have a glimpse of the 'Mother' and of course one cannot miss the iconic bathroom scene. Hitchcock may be called the Master of Suspense but the suspense in Psycho is directly related to its score.
Jeff Danna, Akira Yamaoka's score for Silent Hill is every bit creepier, as with the score, the unconscious is gradually unleashed. One gets to view the two distinctly opposite sides of the protagonist with the music making it worthwhile.
Also, one cannot surely afford to miss Christopher Young's masterpiece in The Exorcism of Emily Rose. The scene portraying the suffering, Emily's dilemma, interlude, the exorcism, her vision of Virgin Mary and finally her martyrdom has unique background scores. The film has a long lasting after effect and particularly the music that seems to haunt the conscious and the sub-conscious, making one restless.
Thrillers and horrors are bland without a spine-chilling background score. How important is music then, for a horror or psychological thriller? Can someone's preference towards a particular genre reveal the extent of his psychopathy?
Researchers are now claiming that psychopaths who shun themselves from the society have a specific musical preference. They are on it to prove that a certain musical preference is correlated with psychopathy. The study on the same was presented at the Society for Neuroscience meeting which was held in Washington.
Pascal Wallisch, a psychology professor at New York University stated that filmmakers while establishing in one shot that a monster has a human side too, plays a certain kind of music.
A Clockwork Orange had Beethoven whereas The Silence of the Lambs had Mozart. Wallisch and Nicole Leal are eager to prove that a personality disorder can be connected to certain musical preference.
A questionnaire was provided to 190 NYU psychology students that helped in rating their level of psychopathy. It included questions such as 'For me what's right is whatever I can get away with' and 'Love is overrated'.
The students were asked to listen to a wide range of songs, starting from the classical era to the recent Billboard songs. Most of the songs were unpopular among the students. They were asked to rate the songs on a scale of 7. The researchers found that 20 songs seemed to be popular and unpopular, depending upon the students' level of psychopathy.
The next batch of students was made to listen to extremely popular songs that bear correlation to psychopathy. The students' reactions to the songs and ratings were noted down. It portrayed their own scores on the psychopathy scale.
The songs with the highest correlation were Eminem's 'Lose Yourself'. This song was included in the 2002 movie '8 Mile'. Blackstreet's 'No Diggity' was also on the list. Justin Bieber's 'What do you mean' was extremely popular among the students. It scored high on the psychopathy scale too.
Researchers have now concluded that people high in psychopathy prefer songs without lyrics as psychopaths really don't care about what the singer feels.
