Influence of Television on the Personal and Social Behavior of an Individual

Past and current studies have shown that there is a direct correlation between the amount/type of television programs watched and the personal and social traits of an individual. The television significantly influences the personal action system of an individual by negatively affecting his/her reading, sleeping and eating habits and the amount of time an individual spends on activities related to hobbies and exercising. It has also been proven that television affects the development of one’s cognitive skills.

Television viewing also plays a key role in the social and cultural behaviors of people and affects the way in which they interact with their social environment. The more time an individual spends on watching television, the less time he/she gets to spend in social activities, family gatherings, religious activities and other cultural programs that are essential for him/her to be an effective social animal.

 

Current Business and Academic Thinking
There are several researches that focus on examining the impacts of television on family interactions. Some of them follow a non-traditional approach by conducting interviews with individual family members on the viewing habits, when they watch television with other family members.
The research on family perceptions of television viewing habits by Nancy M. Hopkins and Ann K. Mullis sheds light on how television can influence individual behavior and family interactions. The research is conducted with 24 mother-father-child triads with specialized interview questions targeted to each family member. The study was conducted from Monday through Friday and the informal way in which children are interviewed helps in avoiding various research errors. The information about viewing behavior of the same program is collected from the different perspectives of each family member. The research provides a detailed analysis of the findings and tries to find the degree of concordance amount the father/mother/child triads. The study finds that there is a difference in agreement between the father and the mother on the television viewing habits of their children. The research finds that fathers tend to think that their children watch more television when compared to what mothers think about the television viewing habits of their children. The research also discusses the possible reasons by which the degree of agreement between children/father varies from those between children/mother. Fathers spend less time with their children than mothers. When the father is at home watching a television program, the study finds that kids are most likely to watch the program with him. This makes a perception on the part of the father to think that the kids are watching lots of television.

Past studies have also focused on the influence of television viewing in the way in which it affects people’s perceptions of the society. The “Cultivation Theory” by Gerbner and his colleagues is centered on the theory that television viewing presents a systematic distortion of reality. There are some significant negative impacts of television on people’s minds and how they relate the crime, violence and sexual content to their personal lives. The studies presented in this theory are based on two of the previous well know models:

Heuristic Processing Model of Cultivation Effects: A group of undergraduate students were chosen to answer a questionnaire that assess their perceptions on the prevalence of crime and particular occupations. The participants were randomly assigned to three different priming conditions and the responses were tabulated. The results are presented based on several regression analysis that assessed the relation of television viewing to social reality estimates within each priming conditions. The study ends by discussing the main causes of the effects of television on people’s perceptions.

The second study is based on the hypothesis that people take a neutral stand when asked to judge the amount of television that they watch on a scale of ordered alternatives. Again a group of undergraduate students were grouped randomly into classes of four conditions and were asked to estimate their viewing based on a frequency scale. This study confirms the conclusions drawn from the first study.

In general, the research methods used for this topic are scientific and focuses on several aspects of people’s perceptions and do extensive secondary research based on proven standards. Several studies also give an in-depth view of the causal effects of television on how people relate their television viewing habits to their day-to-day life.

The impact of television on the cultural values of society is significant and enforces its influence on the personal behavior of an individual. Several studies have shown the importance of conducting a scientific research and providing the results based on the personal, social and cultural impacts of television on society. All these studies explain how television becomes a substitute for social activity within and outside the family circle and how it emerges as an expected form of social interaction among friends.

One of the research studies puts its perspective on the process by which a family establishes its television schedule and how the socio-economic status and the education levels of parents impact the television viewing habits among their children.

The study is based on in-depth interviews with parents. Interviewers were graduate and under-graduate level students and the interviews were conducted for an hour.

The study measures the impact of television on the education of children using three different topics of scientific, moral and social contribution of television on education. The research uses social class of the family as the independent variable. The results of the research found dramatic differences in the responses of parents among different classes of society (see Table 1). The study concludes that television watching is more extensive in the working classes than in the other social groups, and fathers in particular judge their children to watch more television at this level.

A longitudinal study by Steven L. Gortmaker, Charles A. Salter, Debora K. Walker and William H. Dietz Jr. discusses the influence of television viewing habits onto the cognitive abilities of growing children. The study tries to eliminate the errors by sampling a wide range of audience from a national level. The focus of the study was on young children who participate in Cycle 2 and Cycle 3 of surveys, each of which are three years apart. During Cycle 2, parents were interviewed on the amount of television watching by their children, and during Cycle 3, children themselves were interviewed on the same topic. The result shows that there was a substantial variance in the data from Cycle 2 and Cycle 3. The research concludes that there are no significant causal relationship between the amount of television viewed and the aptitude changes of young children. The following table shows the correlation of the survey results conducted during cycle 2 and cycle 3 of the studies.

 

 

The study, however, fails to take other external factors like region, size of place, parent’s education level, neighborhood etc., into consideration and bases its thesis mainly on a very broad question rather than dealing with specific attributes of television viewing.

 

Conclusion
Television acts as a major force in social integration and cultural uniformity. Several studies have proven that the time spent by an individual in front of television plays a significant role in the personal habits of that individual and the way in which he/she interacts with his/her social environment. The different types of television programs that an individual watches are also an important determinant of his/her personal and social traits.

 

Recommendations
In order to prove the hypothesis that there exist a direct correlation between the amount/type of television programs watched and the personal and social traits of an individual, a detailed research is recommended to study the various personal and social behaviors of an audience and analyze the data to find the behavioral changes imposed by television viewing. A self-administrated survey is proposed to measure the personal action system of an individual by collecting data about the reading habits, sleeping habits, eating habits, hobbies and exercise related activities of an individual and try to study the correlation between these behaviors and the impact of television on each one of these personal behaviors. We could also study the impact of television on the social traits of an individual by collecting data about how much time an individual spends in social activities like outdoor games, family picnics, religious activities and other cultural programs. The survey would include questions that measure these attributes and would be handed out to an audience of 100 individuals, selected randomly from as broad a spectrum as possible.

 

References

Family Perceptions of Television Viewing Habits – Nancy M. Hopkins; Ann K. Mullis
Family Relations > Vol. 34, No. 2

The Effects of Television Consumption on Social Perceptions – L. J. Shrum; Robert S. Wyer
The Journal of Consumer Research > Vol. 24, No. 4
 
Television Within the Social Matrix – Robert V. Hamilton; Richard H. Lawless
The Public Opinion Quarterly > Vol. 20, No. 2

Parental Perceptions of the Role of Television in Parent-Child Interaction - Cora A. Martin; Leonard Benson
Journal of Marriage and the Family > Vol. 32, No. 3

The Impact of Television Viewing on Mental Aptitude and Achievement: A Longitudinal Study - Steven L. Gortmaker; Charles A. Salter; Deborah K. Walker; Wiliam H. Dietz. Jr.
The Public Opinion Quarterly > Vol. 54, No. 4

Television and American Culture: The Mass Medium and the Pluralist Audience – W. Russel Neuman
The Public Opinion Quarterly > Vol. 46, No. 4

Television and behavior: Research conclusions of the 1982 NIMH report and their policy implications – Rubenstein, E. A. > American Psychologist