from Amazon
Tuesday, August 08, 2006
Sex: Correlation Is Not Causation
http://www.earthtimes.org/articles/show/7987.html
Teenagers who listened to sexually degrading music were twice as likely to have sex early on than those who listened to music that was more about love and romance.
But Benjamin Chavis, the chief executive of rappers and hip hop recording executives’ coalition Hip-Hop Summit Action Network, felt the lyrics are only a reflection of ‘social and economic realities’. “We caution (against) rushing to judgment that music more than any other factor is a causative factor,” said Chavis.
And…
He’s got it right. It may very well be that the kids who listen to the raunchy music are those predisposed to having sex at an early age. It’s not the music that makes them do it.
You see this “correlation is not causation” applied plenty of times in the sports world as well.
That is the first thing I though of when I read this article yesterday. In fact, it is almost obvious. Imagine all of the religous and other kids from conservative families who are not predisposed to having sex at an early age. There is also no way they are listening to this kind of music, as a general rule. Of course kids who listen to that kind of music are already pre-disposed to having sex at an early age. You don’t need a study to tell you that.
It may be that there is SOME causation, but this kind of study, as far as I can tell without reading the actual study, is not going to tell you anything one way or another. In fact, it seems like a real dumb-ass study. Almost anything non-conservative (smoking, doing drugs, listening to raunchy music, etc.) is going to correlate with having early sex. If nothing else, as I said, you are eliminating the real conservative/religous families/kids, who generally do not do any of those things.