Television and social behavior
Television affects our social behavior in a way that indicates that people can recognize logical inconsistencies among the beliefs they hold by watching various traits of their ideals on television. This is termed as ‘Socratic effect’ proposed by McGuire in 1960. One of the reasons for why people are influenced by television is this Socratic effect which they imitate. Another theoretical perspective as proposed by Fishbein & Azjen in 1985 known as theory of reasoned action and its successor along with the theory of planned behavior uphold the assumption that people think and act in more or less logical ways. People are influenced by three types of responses and many of the theories treat these responses as independent constructs termed belief, attitude and intention (Azjen 2005: 29).
When research psychologists test children who are heavy viewers of violent programs and find them more aggressive in their behavior than children who are lighter viewers, they make the case for the one-way influence that travels from producers of programs to consumers of programs. When parents complain that the sexual content of television contributes to promiscuity, they make much the same point. When civil rights leaders protest a racial slur or feminists decry a sexist image on the air, they are attesting to television’s power to foster harmful behavior. And when journalists proclaim that television ‘sets the agenda’ for society, they reinforce the conviction that the social influence of the tube is like bumper-to-bumper traffic flowing from the set to the public (Selnow & Gilbert 1993: 3).
Reasoned Action (TRA) and Planned Behavior theories (TPB)
These theories indicate that behavioral intentions are the most proximal determinant of social behavior. Such determinants when invoke social behavior results in Intentions which, are proposed to be functions of people’s attitude toward the behavior and the subjective norm, which refers to people’s perception of social, pressure from significant others to perform the behavior (Terry & Hogg 2000: 68).
Attitudes possess an additive effect on our society with positive and negative intentions, with the relative predictive strength of each varying across behaviors and populations. Both theories give us an insight of how attitudes as a function of people’s beliefs about the consequences of the behavior are weighted by the importance or value placed on these consequences. However the responsibility of the television is not only to create influential subjective norms, but to create with an approach that does limit the audience to imitate the optimistic intention, showing the relevant behavior to influence people’s motivation to comply with the expectations of these referents.
Violent Behavior
In a study when violent programs were shown to boys, it was observed that such programs had the most pleasant, the least sadness, and the most interest performed effect on boys along with more hurting behavior or were faster to hurt. When observing violence, comparing the extremes of emotion between those exposed to violence and those exposed to nonviolence, additional support was found for these same three emotions (Comstock et al 1972: 6). For instance in many violent programs, those showing the most pleasantness while viewing violence were more aggressive than those showing most pleasantness while viewing nonviolence. On the other hand contradictory findings were found among the girls for those who viewed violence and displayed the least pleasantness and the most sadness was more aggressive than girls with parallel emotions while watching nonviolence.
Examples of non-violent programs include Reality Dating Programs (RDP), which portrays audience interest in sexual and explicit content and since the content is specifically sexual, it is observed that dating programs may have potentially greater impact on both attitudes toward sex and sexual behaviors of the viewers (Zurbriggen & Morgan 2006).
Socially Prestigious admirer
Let us consider the celebrities or the movie star or any star athlete which are able to capture the attention of millions of their fans. The socially prestigious personalities whom we watch on televisions are all socially competent, thus it would not be wrong to say that we not only listen to them on matters of social opinion but also get influenced by them on their appearance on our television sets. Many theorists believe that the socially prestigious are well known for being well known and since they occupy a prominent position in the social hierarchy, we give those with prestige preferential treatment; their words are treated with honor as if they speak the collective wisdom. Prestigious communicators are particularly effective in influencing their audience when they address their fans that greatly admire and seek to be like their idols a process described by Kelman (1961) as ‘identification’.
Stories told by television are capable of bewildering set of effects that influences audience in many social circumstances and are perceived as a philosophic, religious, or patriotic truth that differs from one that is understood as a diversion and amusement (Monaco 1998: 12).
Limitations of TRA and TPB
Many theorists view TRA and TPB as problematic because they believe that Fishbein and Ajzen never bothered to conceptualize norms in line with the wider social psychological literature on social influence that is, as the accepted or implied rules that specify how group members should behave. Instead, they only presented a single concept before the audience to consider the subjective norm as the extent of pressure perceived from others to perform the target behavior. Loophole is there when such pressures may be latent and may not be perceived for behaviors that do not influence other people, or for behaviors that are not directly associated with harmful outcomes.
Thus, social behavior is influenced whenever norms uphold a profound effect even if they are defined more in line with wider social psychological definitions of norms. This broader notion of our social attitude when assessed with analyzing perceived behavior of others found to predict intentions, but the effects are typically still not strong.
What we see on television does not necessarily cope up with our norms, so the notion that norms, even when assessed to reflect the manner in which they are defined in the wider social psychological literature, do not have strong effects on behavioral intentions may reflect the fact that there are more fundamental problems with the way in which norms are conceptualized in the TRA and TPB (Terry & Hogg 2000: 70). This is evident from the fact that although Fishbein and Ajzen acknowledged the social attitude and normative components of their theories which they correlated to a pattern of results, they still found that variables are cognitively independent for they are based on different belief structures which people comply whenever they see the glimpse of such beliefs on television. In this way it is revealed that people’s attitudes reflect functions of their beliefs about the likely costs and benefits of viewing a behavior, whereas subjective norms are based on people’s beliefs concerning the extent to which others want them to imitate the behavior.
References
Azjen Icek, (2005) Attitudes, Personality and Behavior: Open University Press: Maidenhead, England.
Comstock A. George, Rubinstein A. Eli & Murray P. John, (1972) Television and Social Behavior: Reports and Papers. Volume: 5: National Institute of Mental Health: Rockville, MD.
Monaco Paul, (1998) Understanding Society, Culture and Television: Praeger Publishers: Westport, CT.
Selnow W. Gary & Gilbert R. Richard, (1993) Society’s Impact on Television: How the Viewing Public Shapes Television Programming: Praeger Publishers: Westport, CT.
Terry J. Deborah & Hogg A. Michael, (2000) Attitudes, Behavior, and Social Context: The Role of Norms and Group Membership: Lawrence Erlbaum Associates: Mahwah, NJ.
Zurbriggen L. Eileen & Morgan M. Elizabeth, (2006) “Who Wants to Marry a Millionaire? Reality Dating Television Programs, Attitudes toward Sex and Sexual Behaviors” In: Sex Roles: A Journal of Research: 54: 1-2.