Quickie: Are Reality Shows Making You Mean to Your Partner?

You may need to change the channel

Have you been obsessed with reality shows since The Real World and Road Rules aired? Did you watch every Of Love show on VH1? Do you keep up with all of the Real Housewives franchises?

Do you also find yourself feeling cranky about your partner a lot? Or arguing with them for no apparent reason?

According to researcher Sarah Coyne, this may not be a coincidence.

“All audiences think it won’t affect them, but we aren’t as immune as we think we are.”

Coyne, along with colleague David Nelson, watched 120 hours of popular reality shows and recorded all instances of physical, verbal, or relationship aggression. They found that the mean behavior in these shows far outweighed the amount they observed in non-reality programming. The worst offenders in the study were The Apprentice and American Idol — which respectively had 85 and 57 acts of aggression per hour.

Per. Hour.

It’s no wonder we feel so angry after watching these shows.

Even Coyne was surprised by what she saw, saying in a statement, “I knew the level of aggression was going to be high, but I had no idea it was going to be this high.”

“Of any type of program out there, I would think that reality programs are the most likely to be imitated.”

If these aggressive behaviors were contained to the television shows, it would be no big deal — but Coyne says that these behaviors often jump off the screen and into our real-world actions.

“Of any type of program out there, I would think that reality programs are the most likely to be imitated,” she said. “All audiences think it won’t affect them, but we aren’t as immune as we think we are.”

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Source:

Meaner than fiction: Reality TV high on aggression, study shows. Brigham Young University. https://news.byu.edu/news/meaner-fiction-reality-tv-high-aggression-study-shows