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In the peaceful, affluent America of 1958, Danny & the Juniors released what would be that year's top hit -- a frothy, dance-party anthem called At the Hop.

Just 12 years later, in 1970, a country convulsed by Vietnam, rising crime rates and rapid social change turned to Simon & Garfunkel for a Bridge Over Troubled Water.

According to a new study analyzing Billboard magazine's number one hits for the years 1955 to 2003, the connection between the country's collective mood and its taste in music may not be random.

"It seems that when times are bad we're looking for slower, more meaningful-type music, music that's more comforting. And when times are good it's OK again to enjoy the types of pop songs that really aren't dealing with these deeper issues," explained co-researcher Terry Pettijohn of Mercyhurst College, in Erie, Pa.

According to Pettijohn, these latest findings are consistent with a social psychology theory he helped formulate called the Environmental Security Hypothesis, which suggests that "when people feel insecure or uncomfortable in their current social or economic environment, they prefer people and things that deal with more mature themes."

Previous work by Pettijohn gained much attention when he and a co-researcher found strong connections between the physiques of Playboy Playmates of the Year and U.S. economic conditions, with bustier, younger and wider-eyed Playmates chosen in boom times and older, smaller-eyed women featured when bear markets ruled.

The theory might now apply to pop stars: In their current study, Pettijohn and student co-researcher Donald Sacco also found that in hard times Americans appear drawn to vocalists or groups with physical characteristics linked to maturity -- features such as strong chins and smaller eyes. In relatively good times, however, wide-eyed pop stars such as Mariah Carey or Beyonce Knowles rule.

Pettijohn presented the findings Friday at the American Psychological Society annual meeting, in Los Angeles.

A second related study -- this one by doctoral student Beth Cady of Kansas State University -- was presented at the same meeting. Cady's research found pop music to be a powerful trigger of emotion-laden memories.

In fact, hearing the music wasn't necessary to evoke a response in most of the study participants, with memories flooding back after they simply read a much-loved song's title, or glimpsed a familiar CD cover.

"Music is very emotion-laden, as are memories -- that's the connection," she said.

Pettijohn said his findings suggest Top 40 hits may tap into the nation's emotional state, as well.

He and Sacco had 46 young adults listen to Billboard-rated number one hits of the year for the past 50 years, starting with 1955's Cherry Pink and Apple Blossom White (Perez Prado) and ending with 50 Cent's 2003 smash, In Da Club.

Participants rated each song for "meaningfulness," which could include elements such as the amount of "comfort" it gave listeners or level of romantic content. "Meaningfulness" is a subjective term, Pettijohn pointed out, "but it generally means the song lyric's depth, their focus on meaningful issues. We left that up to the rater to decide."

At the same time, the researchers used standard U.S. social indicators -- the consumer price index, unemployment, crime, homicide and divorce rates -- to track the country's socioeconomic good and bad times over the past five decades.

In keeping with the Environmental Security Hypothesis, "We found that when socioeconomic times were relatively poor, the songs that were more meaningful in content were the ones that were preferred," Pettijohn said.

Some examples: Fun pop-rock such as At the Hop and Elvis Presley's All Shook Up were chart-toppers in the boom years of the late 1950s. But by the more tumultuous early 1970s slower, darker and more emotionally potent songs -- Roberta Flack's Killing Me Softly With His Song (1973) and Barbara Streisand's The Way We Were (1974) -- dominated the airwaves.

By the early 1990s, the boom years of the late 1980s were over and America had slipped into an era of recession and rising crime. Slow, emotionally charged power ballads, such as Bryan Adam's Everything I Do I Do It For You (1991) and Whitney Houston's I Will Always Love You (1992), dominated this period.

"Things were actually getting progressively better again through the late 1990s," Pettijohn said, reflected by peppy number ones such as Macarena (Los Del Rio, 1996) and The Boy is Mine (Brandy & Monica, 1998).

"Then September 11th hit," he said. That year, Lifehouse's Hanging By a Moment -- rated by participants as one of the most meaningful songs they had listened to -- held sway atop the pop charts.

The physical characteristics of our favorite pop stars seem to change with changing times, too, Pettijohn said. Especially after the introduction of MTV in 1984, mature-looking singers with smaller eyes and strong chins tended to dominate airplay in bad times, with softer, younger types charting smash hits as times got better.

Cady called the Mercyhurst findings "really interesting."

"It seems that there is this collective experience everyone has, along with the individual experiences connected to music that I found in my study. They all play off each other." In Cady's study, even visual cues -- printed lyrics, CD covers -- of well-loved hit songs evoked strong memories from the 19-year-old participants.

Not surprisingly, musical favorites from junior high or high school triggered the strongest responses. "This is when people are starting to form their own identities," Cady pointed out. "They're getting away from their parents and moving into peer groups. Music seems to be a big socialization factor."

Pettijohn said his findings might even help artists and record companies craft bigger, better hits.

"In 2000, when things were actually getting better, Destiny's Child had the number one song [Independent Woman Part 1]," he pointed out. "Beyonce and the other two women in that group have big baby faces with larger eyes. Now, if they tailor some of their messages along with that appearance, it might make a great formula for a hit."
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Also from the American Psychological Association

You are what you listen to
Print version: page 33
Most people's music preferences fall into one of four broad categories, according to a new study in the Journal of Personality and Social Psychology (Vol. 84, No. 6).

What's more, preferences for those categories correlate with traits such as personality, political orientation, verbal ability and athleticism.

"We can learn a lot about personality by looking at everyday life, and music preference is just one facet of everyday life," says Jason Rentfrow, a graduate student at The University of Texas at Austin who co-authored the study with his adviser, psychologist Samuel Gosling, PhD.

Rentfrow and Gosling collected data on the music preferences of several thousand undergraduates at The University of Texas using a new scale--the Short Test of Music Preferences (STOMP). They also analyzed the music collections of people who use Internet file-sharing services.

In both samples, music preferences tended to clump into one of four categories, which Rentfrow and Gosling dubbed "reflective and complex," "intense and rebellious," "upbeat and conventional" and "energetic and rhythmic." Each category included several kinds of music. "Reflective and complex," for example, covered classical, jazz, blues and folk, while "upbeat and conventional" covered country, religious, soundtrack and pop.

Those categories turn out to be significantly correlated with a variety of personal traits, including "Big Five" personality measures.

People who listen to "reflective and complex" music, for example, score highly on openness to new experiences, verbal ability, self-perceived intelligence and political liberalism, while people who listen to "upbeat and conventional" music score highly on extraversion, self-perceived physical attractiveness, athleticism and political conservatism.

Two factors appear to drive the connection between music preferences and personal characteristics, say Rentfrow and Gosling. First, people choose to listen to music that suits their moods and activities. "People who enjoy spending time with others, people who enjoy talking and socializing, tend to enjoy music that is also extraverted--in some ways, party music," says Rentfrow.

People also use music to inform others about themselves. "Adolescents, in particular, use music as a way to fit into groups, as a way to manage people's impressions of them," says Rentfrow. "It's a badge, if you will, of their identity."