Viewer Aggression and Attraction to Television Talk Shows

Abstract

Guided by the uses and gratifications perspective, we examined how dispositional factors-aggression, anger, attitudes toward women, and communication anxiety and reward-and television-viewing factors-motivation, attitudes, topics, emotions, and parasocial interaction-explained attraction to different TV talk shows.We considered how these dispositional and viewing factors discriminated among different talk show preferences and different levels of aggression. Compared with The Oprah Winfrey Show viewers, Jerry Springer viewers thought shows were less realistic; enjoyed watching voyeuristic topics and guests' being angry, embarrassed, shocked, and hurt; watched to be entertained and excited rather than to be informed; and developed fewer parasocial relationships. Compared with persons with low levels of aggression, those with high levels of aggression were angry; had negative attitudes toward women; enjoyed watching guests' being embarrassed, angry, shocked, and hurt; thought others did not value their interpersonal interactions; and watched talk shows more often, especially to interact with others. We discuss the implications of these findings.

Why We Follow: An Examination of Parasocial Interaction and Fan Motivations for Following Athlete Archetypes on Twitter

“…All the correlations (except for time spent with the medium) were found to be significant for both follower sets. This is consistent with decades of PSI research that found that affinity (Rubin, 1979(Rubin, , 1981, instrumental media use (Kim & Rubin, 1997;Rubin et al, 1985), perceived realism (Rubin & Perse, 1987;Rubin et al, 2003;Rubin et al, 1985), uncertainty reduction (Perse & Rubin, 1989), social attraction (Rubin & McHugh, 1987), and attitude homophily (Turner, 1993) correlated with PSI. Though most PSI correlations were significant, three were found to be of moderate strength for followers of the social athlete (i.e., uncertainty reduction, attitude homophily, and instrumental media use) and four were found to be of moderate strength for the followers of the parasocial athlete (i.e., uncertainty reduction, attitude homophily, instrumental media use, and perceived realism).…”

“…PSI research over the last 3 decades has examined the relationships between audience members and newscasters (Palmgreen, Wenner, & Rayburn, 1980;Rubin et al, 1985), television performers (Rubin & McHugh, 1987), soap opera characters (Perse & Rubin, 1989;Rubin & Perse, 1987, Sood & Rogers, 2000, and television and radio talk-show hosts (Rubin, Haridakis, & Eyal, 2003;Rubin & Step, 2000). PSI research has also been conducted on television shopping hosts (Grant, Guthrie, & Ball-Rokeach, 1991;Gudelunas, 2006), reality-based television programming (Nabi, Stitt, Halford, & Finnerty, 2006), and print-media sources such as romance novels (Burnett & Beto, 2000).…”

“…Over the last 30-40 years, various constructs have been found to correlate with PSI in traditional-media outlets. Some of the most commonly cited include uncertainty reduction (Perse & Rubin, 1989), social attraction (Rubin & McHugh, 1987), attitude homophily (Turner, 1993), perceived realism (Rubin et al, 1985;Rubin et al, 2003;Rubin & Perse, 1987) affinity (Rubin, 1979;Rubin et al, 1985;Rubin & Perse, 1987), amount of time spent with the medium (Grant et al, 1991), and instrumental media use (Kim & Rubin, 1997;Rubin et al, 1985). In most of the cited studies, these constructs were treated as antecedent conditions to PSI development.…”

“…More important, this research demonstrates that PSI can be tested quantitatively in the realm of sport and social media from the fan perspective. In addition, unlike recent PSI and sport research that used survey methodology (i.e., Earnheardt & Haridakis, 2009;Rubin et al, 2003;Spinda et al, 2009;Sun, 2010), this study went beyond the use of convenience sampling.…”

Attracted but Unsatisfied: The Effects of Sensational Content on Television Consumption Choices

“…We focused on verbal violence as one of the most common types of content used to attract television viewers' attention. Verbal violence, broadly defined as "noxious symbolic messages containing criticism, insults, cursing, or a negative affective reaction" (Greenberg, 1980, p. 108), is a common form of sensational content that is particularly widespread in talk shows (Wood, 4 2001, Rubin et al, 2003, where the setting is often intentionally organized in order to spectacularize verbal confrontations (Hutchby, 2001;Luginbühl, 2007). In recent years, the portrayal of verbal violence in television programs has increased substantially, while that of physical violence has remained relatively unchanged Vaughan, 1997, Gunter et al, 2003).…”