Relationships between exposure to rap music videos and attitudes toward relationships among African American youth

The purpose of the study is to (a) predict adversarial attitudes toward male-female relationships and (b) explore the relationships between traditional agents of socialization and personal acceptance of negative images in rap videos by African American adolescents. Participants completed psychosocial measures, viewed videos, and completed surveys about the videos. Higher levels of adversarial attitudes toward mate-female relationships and exposure to rap videos were associated with acceptance of negative images of women in the videos. Participants who reported watching rap videos because their friends watched them held less adversarial attitudes toward male-female relationships than did those who reported watching because they were fun to watch or to find out the latest trends. Furthermore, higher levels of spiritual or religious coping and higher socioeconomic status were associated with rejection of negative images of women in rap videos. Last, higher levels of spiritual or religious coping were associated with the rejection of negative images of men and male-female interactions in rap videos. Implications for clinicians and parents are outlined, and recommendations for future research are provided.