Introduction
Human behavior is a product of a range of various interrelated factors that walk alongside with our lives starting with the early childhood and is even thought to be closely related to genetics and predicted by it (Hartwell, 2014). Thus, it can be concluded that people’s behavior is always under the influence of people around us, environment, culture and other things that cannot be excluded from our lives (Kierkus & Baer, 2002).
The effect produced by them is considered by many scholars; however, they still have not come to the irreversible decision. We pointed out three variables that are tightly connected with everyday life and go along with us wherever we are. These are music, media and culture – things that every person is aware of and understands.
We develop a hypothesis that human behavior changes in the course of a lifetime, because it is influenced by music one listens to, media the person perceives, and culture he/she inherits. This issue is important as the knowledge of the reasons of some kinds of people’s behavior provides individuals with the opportunity to reduce the adverse impacts and become more independent in the decision-making and actions (Rost, 2002).
Literature Review
Of course, we are not the only ones who investigate this issue that is why in our study we refer to the works of the researchers, who examined the influence made on the human behavior.
In her article, Tropeano focuses on the influence provided on people by the music they listen to and music videos they watch. She also found that “watching the violent music video containing violent lyrics, aggressive behavior, and degrading behaviors toward women did make an individual feel and react more violently with regards to responses to questions about fictitious scenarios” (Tropeano, 2011).
According to this research, it becomes obvious that even one’s musical tastes have a great impact on the personality and actions of a person, which supports our hypothesis.
Media is the factor that recently started to affect people’s behavior at a great rate. Paek, Gunther, McLeod and Hove focus on the issue using the example of smoking decisions made by adolescence and their connection with media. They distinguish that the majority of peers are influenced by antismoking messages in predicting adolescent smoking attitudes and behavior (Paek, Gunther, McLeod, & Hove, 2011).
After the evaluation of the gained dada the authors came up to a decision that media is really a great tool for antismoking campaigns, which proves that it has an immense influence on people, as media surrounds them whenever and wherever they are.
We all exist in the particular society, and its members render us the values of the culture while interacting with us. Thus, it influences our behavior, thoughts, and actions. Matsumoto claims that culture “emerges from the connection between the ecological context and basic human nature, and the way in which social roles are determined by culture-specific psychological meanings attributed to situational contexts” (Matsumoto, 2007).
He also comes to the conclusion that every day people play some specific roles that are expected of them by the society; the performance of the roles differs due to various cultures, but the influence stays unchanged.
Hypotheses
After considering the information received from these articles, several hypotheses can be made. People who listen to calm music receive positive impact as it helps them to compose themselves while those who prefer sharp and disturbing melodies gain detrimental effect. Under the influence of media, people change their attitudes and decisions, which reflects on the behavior. Human behavior alters, because it is affected by the values of the culture that one is taught.
Taking into consideration everything mentioned above, we can prove that human behavior is not constant. It changes due to the influences from the outer world even though we do not always realize this. As music, media and culture are inalienable parts of our life, they are the ones that affect it the most.
References
Hartwell, H. (2014). Behaviour change. Perspectives in Public Health, 134(1), 1-15.
Kierkus, C. & Baer, D. (2002). A social control explanation of the relationship between family structure and delinquent behaviour. Canadian Journal of Criminology, 44(4), 32-70.
Matsumoto, D. (2007). Culture, context, and behavior. Journal of Personality, 75(6), 1285-1320.
Paek, H., Gunther, A., McLeod, D., & Hove, T. (2011). How adolescents’ perceived media influence on peers affects smoking decisions. The Journal of Consumer Affairs, 45(1), 123-146.
Rost, J. (2002). When personality questionnaires fail to be unidimensional. Psychologische Beiträge, 44(1), 108-125.
Tropeano, E. (2011). Does rap or rock music provoke violent behavior? Journal of Undergraduate Psychological Research, 1(1), 31-34.