When confronted by apparently related statistics A and B it's often difficult to determine whether:
- A causes B
- B causes A
- both A and B are caused by some third factor C, or
- A and B are totally unrelated.
An article about a recent study of music and the sexual habits of teenagers contains no information that indicates how the researchers reached their conclusion -- that listening to sexual music prompts teens to have sex.
Teens whose iPods are full of music with raunchy, sexual lyrics start having sex sooner than those who prefer other songs, a study found.Whether it's hip-hop, rap, pop or rock, much of popular music aimed at teens contains sexual overtones. Its influence on their behavior appears to depend on how the sex is portrayed, researchers found.
Songs depicting men as "sex-driven studs," women as sex objects and with explicit references to sex acts are more likely to trigger early sexual behavior than those where sexual references are more veiled and relationships appear more committed, the study found.
Teens who said they listened to lots of music with degrading sexual messages were almost twice as likely to start having intercourse or other sexual activities within the following two years as were teens who listened to little or no sexually degrading music.
But isn't it just as likely that teens who are predisposed towards sexual activities will seek out sexual music? Perhaps the music doesn't make the teens sexual, but rather the sexual teens gravitate towards the music. Absent further information, there's no logical reason to favor one direction of causation over the other. It's important to remember that just because A and B are seen together doesn't imply that A and B are related, much less that one causes the other.
Quite possibly. At a minimum, one would think that teens who disapprove of teen sex are more likely to shun music that advertises it.
I think we can pretty well eliminate the possibility that this A and this B are unreleated, but the other three options (read: all three examples of correlation, as opposed to mere coincidence) seem plausible enough. Maybe sexy songs influence kids, maybe sexually active kids enjoy songs about their favorite pasttime, or maybe church leaders encourage kids to shun both sex and sinful music - and unsurprisingly, the kids who do as they're told on Issue A are also the ones who generally do as they're told on Issue B. Or all of the above.
I don't think the correlation can be completely attributed to self-selecting behavior. I think teens who have decided not to have sex until they are 'ready' become increasingly desensitized to sex and it seems a smaller and smaller deal until they believe they are 'ready' at 15 years old or whenever. These teens become desensitized earlier and faster if their input is highly sexual. Remember when 90210 was 'cutting edge' or Friends? If they think everyone is doing it, they are more likely to do it and listening to the music and watching the TV shows helps teen sex become more normative.
There are dozens and dozens of experiments indicating a causal relationship between media and behavior. So it would be strange to find a correlation here without a cause.
The inference to causality isn't always easy to make, because ultimately it depends on the plausibility of the connection.