Psychopaths prefer listening to rap music

NEW YORK: Psychopaths like listening to rap music, according to a study which found that people with the highest psychopath scores were among the greatest fans of the hip-hop genre.

Researchers from New York University (NYU) in the US conducted tests on two groups of volunteers. First, they studied 200 people who listened to 260 songs.

The team combined the volunteers' answers from the music study with the results from participants who had previously taken psychopath tests.

Researchers then identified songs that seemed to be most popular among psychopaths, and others favoured by non-psychopaths, The Guardian reported.

They found that participants with the highest psychopath scores were among the greatest fans of the Blackstreet number one hit No Diggity, with Eminem's Lose Yourself rated highly too.

Tests on the second group of volunteers suggested the songs could help to predict the disorder.

The study found that whatever their other personality traits might be, fans of The Knack's My Sharona and Sia's Titanium were among the least psychopathic.

"The media portrays psychopaths as axe murderers and serial killers, but the reality is they are not obvious, they are not like The Joker in Batman," said Pascal Wallisch, lead researchers from NYU.

"They might be working right next to you, and they blend in. They are like psychological dark matter," Wallisch added.

About one percent of the general population meets the description of a psychopath, but the figure is far higher in prisons, where about one in five has the disorder.

Previous studies have found gene variants that are more common in psychopaths, but they are hardly predictive of the disorder. They appear to alter people's tendencies for empathy and aggression, but they do not determine people's actions.