If you only have to hear the opening line of Lose Yourself in order to immediately launch into Eminem's 2002 track, then you may want to sit down before reading on.

The soundtrack to 8 Mile recently featured in scientific research, and the connotations associated with knowing the words of the track from start to finish aren't exactly uplifting.

According to a preliminary study into psychopathy, individuals who were fans of tracks including Lose Yourself and No Diggity scored the highest on the psychopath scale.

The study, which was conducted at New York City University, involved exposing 200 individuals to 260 songs while researchers compared the participants' personality tests to their taste in music.

And it turns out that Eminem fans along with Blackstreet fans raised more red flags than Sia fans, for example.

Speaking to The Guardian, head researcher, Pascal Wallisch, explained the motivation behind the study, saying: "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,"

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

As many may consider the link between musical taste and psychopathy a tenuous one, Wallisch explains that the study allows for further investigation into a potentially dangerous group of people.

“You don’t want to have these people in positions where they can cause a lot of harm,” continued Wallisch. “We need a tool to identify them without their cooperation or consent.”

Wallisch stressed that the study was still in its preliminary phases, but are confident that their findings provide a foundation robust enough to launch a major study into the links between musical taste and psychopathic traits.

This work is very preliminary,” he said. “This is not the end of an investigation, it is the very beginning."

*Immediately deletes Lose Yourself from iPod.*