Does prog make you smart?

Recently my uncle had told me of an experiment someone made. They took two normal people who listened to standard pop music and gave them a variety of acedemic tests to guage their I.Q and their level of knowledge.

After that they had one person listen to rap for an entire month while the other listened to classical music.

Afterwards they retested them and found the one who listened to rap actually scored lower than he did a month earlier and the one who listened to classical scored higher.

1st I was wondering if anyone has heard of this or is this just a bunch of mularkey?

2nd, if it is true, could the same hold true for someone who listens to progressive rock, would they actually get smarter like the guy who listened to classical.(that obviously hasn't been the case for me.)

The classical music phenomenon has been (controversially) documented before - I think there was a study called The Mozart Effect (or something along those lines). I've not heard about any specific study relating to rap, but I'd imagine similar effects would be associated with styles like death metal, hardore punk and anything my neighbour's teenagers play at 2 am when their parents are away.

I also recall a study which showed that plants grow better if you play them classical music, but worse if you play them hard rock. I always leave my radio tuned to radio 3 if we're away for a few days and my plants seem to thrive on it. This would bear out Lemmy's boast about Motorhead: "If we moved in next door to you, your lawn would die".

Having said that, IQ tests prove nothing more than your ability to do well in IQ tests. Anybody who wants to join MENSA should be forced to read a copy of 'The Mismeasure of Man' by Stephen Jay Gould first.

gdub411 wrote: 1st I was wondering if anyone has heard of this or is this just a bunch of mularkey?

It beggars belief!

I reckon if you try hard enough, you can prove anything you want in a lab situation!

Total cobblers!

Recently I told this girl who happens to be an avid rap listener this experiment and she said "It was a bunch of crap!

I told her a classical music listener would have said it more articulately like: That is a great deal of defacation or such

Later she had forgotten where she had left her purse and asked if I knew where it was and I told her " If you'd listen to classical music you'd  remember."

Her reply to that was "#@%#%^"......