No, I am not putting a question mark at the end of that. I have seen enough evidence to reach a sensible conclusion, being smart enough not to watch this steaming pile of snot in the first place.
Watching 'Jersey Shore' might make you dumber, study suggests
By Melissa Dahl
Take note, fans of mindless reality shows like "Jersey Shore": New research suggests watching something dumb might make you dumber. In other words, you are what you watch.
It's called media priming -- the idea that the things we watch or listen to or read influence our emotions and our behavior, perhaps more than we realize. This particular study may be the first to use fictional characters in a narrative to show an effect on people's cognitive performance, says lead author Markus Appel, a psychologist at Austria's University of Linz.
In an experiment, volunteers were told to read a fake screenplay about a character they refer to as a "foolish soccer hooligan." (A subsequent finding of the study: Austrians are adorable.) The story describes a day in the life of a man named Meier: He wakes up, reads (and misunderstands) the message in an inspiration-of-the-day calendar, meets his friends in a bar and gets very drunk. Meier then goes to a soccer game, gets into a fight and comes home to crash; he sleeps through the next day. (Subs ute the soccer game for a nightclub, and you have something very similar to the televised daily shenanigans of Snooki or The Situation.)
Some of the 81 volunteers were instructed to read a longer version of the "soccer hooligan" story, while others read a shorter version -- and the control group read a rather boring story in which Meier does nothing stupid. Then researchers gave the volunteers a multiple choice general knowledge test, including questions like, "What is the capital of Libya?" and "What kind of speed is expressed by the letter 'c' in physics?" and "Who painted La Guernica?"
To be fair, these are tough questions to answer sans-Internet regardless of whether you've just watched something vapid like "Toddlers and Tiaras." But, as the researchers write, "participants who read a narrative about a stupidly acting soccer hooligan performed worse in the knowledge test than participants who read a narrative about a character with no reference to his intellectual abilities.
"The present study is, to our knowledge, the first to show media priming effects of story characters on cognitive performance," they explain in the report, which was published online this month in the journal Media Psychology.
Think you're too smart to be influenced by the media you consume? That's cute. Anything we see -- a person on the street, an ad on TV, a character in a movie -- has some influence on our next thoughts, emotions or actions, simply because it's top of mind, says Joanne Cantor, a psychologist and member of the American Psychological Association who has studied the emotional and behavioral effect of TV and movies.
“What you’ve been thinking about recently or seeing recently (is) at a higher level in your consciousness, so your brain is kind of predisposed in that direction,” says Cantor, professor emerita of communication arts and outreach director center for communication research at the University of Wisonsin-Madison. “So if you’ve just seen a movie about really altruistic people and you get an opportunity to behave altruistically, you’ll probably do it, rather than if you’ve just seen a movie about selfish people." (So fans of "It's Always Sunny in Philadelphia" aren't particularly charitable? Noted.)
http://bodyodd.msnbc.msn.com/_news/2...study-suggests
like Jersey Shore and other reality shows push the bounderies of behavior and at udes for not only what is allowable/acceptable on t.v. but culture. so it doesn't surprise me that it has an effect on way epole think and behave. and every show tries to outdo the one prior to it so it'll only get worse. hard to imagine it can get any stupider but it will. combine that with the fact that this country is stupid and uneducated and that's a bad combination.
I thought everyone knew this already.
Yes, sadly my first thought upon reading the le was, "Well, duh."
Which shows just how dumb reality tv has made me.
I don't give a damn. When PaulyD is back on the air you bet your ass I'll be DVRing it.
What makes a person care/interested in a stranger's life?
I don't watch much reality shows. Only one I think I watch now and then is dirty jobs. My wife is hooked on shows like "wives of new jersey"(or some city) and stuff like that. I remember watching it like 5 min and thinking "wtf cares what you're doing today...cause I sure as don't" then looked at my wife glued to the screen....and was like "oh right"
You don't ever watch movies? You never read books? What makes you interested in those? Its not like half of Jersey Shore isn't staged.
I don't care what anyone says, Jersey Shore is ing hilarious.
So far today I've read plans for a coal fire plant, and this article, and I didn't know the answer to two of the example questions..........guess one of those two things I've read today is the cause.........try to guess which one?
Pauly D is funny as and probably the only reason to watch this . From the way he talks, carries himself, his stupid funny immature jokes, etc, is he any different from Fonsie or any other funny character from other popular shows? And come one people, there's no such thing as reality TV! The only reality TV I know of are live PPV events and news.
What an astounding discovery.
ppl who watch real tv are the kids of people who spy on neighbors tbh
I can honestly say i have never seen the jersey shore show, and have never felt any desire to try and watch it. I just cant get the appeal...
What i find even more odd is that otherwise intelligent people, seem to like watching these buffoons.
The OP is really flawed though. It acts as if there's no place in society for mindless stupid entertainment. I promise you that if you never partake in something mindless simply for entertainment value you will burn out before you reach any sort of intelligence pinnacle.
Spoken like a Jersey Shore fan.
HA! j/k. I am all for mindless entertainment on occasion, once in a while. A steady diet of it though... that should worry anyone.
Not surprising, to be honest anyone who watches more than an hour or two max of TV a day (mostly everyone, in fact, the average in the USA was 2 hours a day a few years back, probably up more now) is pretty much wasting their time and getting dumber, or at least, not getting smarter for a few cheap laughs or thrills, and sometimes not even that
Especially jersey shore, seriously garbage for the intellect. it's sad that nowadays so many insecure people exist and are sated by laughing at other people or mocking them, that now we have shows such as Jersey Shore
I wonder how much Jersey Shore the good folks of Austria had to watch before they got dumb enough to fund this study.
When there's a game on I want to watch - and thats at least 3-4 times a week - I definitely watch more than 2 hours of TV that day. And that doesn't even include the 2 or 3 movies Ill watch a week.
Now if only they'd do a study for "Housewives of <random location here>". I'm sure we'd meet with the same conclusions.
I swear I felt dull mentally after the other half forced me to sit through a few episodes.
i assume you are asking why watching TV makes you dumber, because you could be doing something constructive with that time (basically anything that involves active problem-solving) instead of sitting on your ass staring at a screen while being mentally hand-held throughout (Jersey Shore). it is a fantasy scenario that the director and editors create to keep your interested, and not a reflection or indicator of real life situations, so it's not good from an experience or learning standpoint, basically the only arguments one could make
BTW I didn't mention movies per se for a reason, they technically count as TV at home but a well-made movie is generally much more intellectually involving for the viewer than ANY tv show, which is made with leading into commercials and ads in mind, and keeping you hooked with any BS tactic they can pull as long as possible to watch more commercials and ads.
I'm not saying TV isn't entertaining, but that's the problem, it's all bang and no buck at the end of the day when one's vegetated in front of the screen for hours
there are some exceptions, especially in small children's TV, but once you get to 9-10 year old cartoons, it's all bull even there.
While I am not a big TV guy at all and hold the same opinion that most Americans watch way too much TV for their own good, I must disagree with your statement. I can't see how watching a few sports games and channels like Animal Planet or Discovery make you dumber. There are programs out there where you learn a lot about animals, clearly not making you dumber, quite the opposite.
And while I agree Jersey Shore and its stars are ing pathetic, it doesn't stop me from watching many episodes (not as much during latest seasons, has become way too planned and repe ive, not really new material just a different setting) because I often find it hilarious. It's a damn shame people like Snooki and Ronnie are now rich as for their ages with literally zero skills and just about every character is extremely replaceable with a long list of guido morons in this country, but damn it that's the free market and you have to accept it. I may be wrong though because according toashbeeigh, Snooki is very talented, good at what she does, and very few people could play the same role as she.
Also, one of the biggest faults with the study as I can see from that article is the lack of perception. People perceive different subject matter differently. In the case of Jersey Shore, a person may watch it and feel envy for the party atmosphere and lack of responsibility they display while another person may watch it and laugh at the utter ridiculousness of the situation. If they want to say that what you watch has an affect on how you think then perception of that material must be important as well and it seems as though they have tried to shoe horn the authors perception in place of the subjects.
That seems rather flawed to me. Thats not say the study doesn't have merit, its just an important factor to consider when making your conclusions.
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