A study just published by Axel Meyer, Thomas Elbert and their colleagues at the University of Konstanz in Germany, however, points to a phenomenon called epigenetics as the likely answer.

The initial intention was to study how much peer pressure influences teenagers' decisions - which is why Berns' team chose music their subjects were unlikely to have heard before.

Few professors actually care whether or not they are liked by peer-paralyzed adolescents, fools so shallow as to imagine professors care not about education but about popularity.