Watching Mean People On TV Could Make You One, Study Says
Research Shows Watching Mean People On TV May Turn You Into One.
You know how your folks told you, “You are the company you keep?”. You can apparently apply that to the folks that keep you company during couch-potato time. A study has been released that shows watching mean folks on TV might make you a big ol’ meanie too.
New research shows that that TV programs about backstabbing frenemies and wig-pulling fights can actually lead viewers to engage in some mean-girl behavior of their own.
Published in the journal Aggressive Behavior and highlighted by Science Daily, the study “’Frenemies, Fraitors, and Mean-em-aitors’: Priming effects of viewing physical and relational aggression in the media on women” was co-authored by psychology professors from Iowa State University. In the study, 250 college women were shown three video clips, each depicting a different type of aggression. The first clip was of physical aggression (violent fighting, murder), the second clip was relational aggression (gossip, backstabbing, exclusion from a social circle), and the third clip was just a scary scene.
All three films produced physiological arousal, and that both the physical and relational aggressions caused aggressive scripts in the brain to activate. So watching a clip of two girls fighting over a boyfriend causes the same kind of reaction that watching a murderous scene would. This leads to a higher chance of engaging in aggressive behavior because the stimuli “primes” your brain for aggression. The authors say that relational aggression is essentially what cyberbullying is; the social exclusion created by de-friending someone on Facebook, spreading rumors, hateful Internet boards and forums, and Twitter beefs are all a type of relational aggression.
