A landmark comparative study (U.S. and Brazil) of television's social and cultural effects on human behavior. The Updated Edition brings forward the author's research on this topic since the original volume was published in 1990 with an extensive new Introduction.
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Why should a cultural anthropologist, trained to study primitive societies, be interested in television, which is the creation of a complex, industrial society? My interest in television's impact on human social behavior arose mainly through contacts with young Americans. These include my children, their friends, and particularly the college students at the University of Michigan to whom I have been teaching introductory anthropology since 1968.
I teach my introductory course, which enrolls 600 students a semester, in a large auditorium. A microphone is necessary if the perennial instructor wants to avoid cancer of the larynx. One or two semesters a year, I stand on a stage in front of these massed undergraduates. In 13-14 weeks of lecturing I survey the field of anthropology, one of the broadest in the college curriculum. I cover not only cultural anthropology, which is my own specialty, but also the other three subdisciplinesāprehistoric archeology, biological anthropology, and anthropological linguistics. Introductory anthropology is among the first courses taken at Michigan. Many students take it to satisfy their social science distribution requirement. Most do not plan to major in anthropology, and many will never take another anthropology course.
For these reasons, the lecturer must work hard to keep students' attention, and my evaluations usually give me good marks for making lectures interesting. However, students in this setting perceive a successful lecturer not simply as a teacher, but as something of an entertainer. My efforts to keep them interested sometimes have the side effect of creating a less formal and more relaxed atmosphere than is usual in a lecture. The combination of large lecture hall, electronic voice amplification, and relative informality sometimes prompts students to relax too much for my taste. Nevertheless, changes in students' behavior over the past decade, particularly their more relaxed classroom comportment, helped turn my attention to television's effects on human behavior.
Teleconditioning
Most of the freshmen I have taught during the past decade were born after 1955. They belong to the first generation raised after the almost total diffusion of television into the American home. Most of these young Americans have never known a world without TV. The tube has been as much a fixture in their homes as mom or dad. Considering how common divorce has become, the TV set even outlasts the father in many homes. American kids now devote 22-30 hours to television each week. By the end of high school, they will have spent 22,000 hours in front of the set, versus only 11,000 in the classroom (Ann Arbor News 1985b). Such prolonged exposure must modify Americans' behavior in several ways.
I have discussed the behavior modification I see in my classroom with university colleagues, and many say they have observed similar changes in students' conduct. The thesis to be defended in this book is somewhat different from those of other studies about television's effects on behavior. Previous researchers have found links between exposure to media content (for example, violence) and individual behavior (hyperactivity, aggression, "acting out"). I also believe that content affects behavior. However, I make a more basic claim: The very habit of watching television has modified the behavior of Americans who have grown up with the tube.
Anyone who has been to a movie house recently has seen examples of TV-conditioned behaviorāteleconditioning. People talk, babies cry, members of the audience file in and out getting snacks and going to the bathroom. Students act similarly in college courses. A decade ago, there was always an isolated student who did these kinds of things. What is new is a behavior pattern, characteristic of a group rather than an individual. This cultural pattern is becoming more and more pronounced, and I link it directly to televiewing. Stated simply, the pattern is this: Televiewing causes people to duplicate inappropriately, in other areas of their lives, behavior styles developed while watching television.
Some examples are in order. Almost nothing bothers professors more than having someone read a newspaper in class. If lecturers take their message and teaching responsibilities seriously, they are understandably perturbed when a student shows more interest in a sports column or "Doonesbury." I don't often get newspapers in class, but one day I noticed a student sitting in the front row reading a paperback novel. Irritated by her audacity, I stopped lecturing and asked "Why are you reading a book in my class?" Her answer: "Oh, I'm not in your class. I just came in here to read my book."
How is this improbable response explained? Why would someone take the trouble to come into a classroom in order to read? The answer, I think, is this: Because of televiewing, many young Americans have trouble reading unless they have background noise. Research confirms that most Americans do something else while watching television. Often they read. Even I do it. When I get home from work I often turn on the television set, sit down in a comfortable chair, and go through the mail or read the newspaper.1
Research on television's impact in other countries confirms that televiewing evolves through certain stages (see Chapter 9). The first stage, when sets are introduced, is rapt attention, gazes glued to the screen. Some of us can remember from the late 1940s and 1950s sitting in front of our first TV, dumbly watching even test patterns. Later, as the novelty diminishes, viewers become progressively less attentive. Televiewers in Brazil, whom I began studying systematically in 1983, had already moved past the first stage, but they were still much more attentive than Americans.
A study done in Brazil's largest city, Sao Paulo, illustrates the contrast. The study shocked Rede Globo, Brazil's dominant network (and the most watched commercial TV network in the world). It revealed that half the viewers were not paying full attention when commercials were shown. Afraid of losing advertising revenues, Rede Globo attacked the accuracy of the research. American sponsors are so accustomed to inattention and, nowadays, to remote control tune-outs, that it would probably delight them if even half the audience stayed put.
The student who came to my class to read her novel was simply an extreme example of a culture pattern derived from television. Because of her lifelong TV dependency, she had trouble reading without background noise. It didn't matter to her whether the background hum came from a stereo, a TV set, or a live professor. Accustomed to machines that don't talk back, she probably was amazed that I noticed her at all. Perhaps my questioning even prompted her to check her set that night to see if someone real was lurking inside.
Another example of a televiewing effect is students' increasing tendency to enter and leave classrooms at will. Of course, individual students do occasionally get sick or have a dentist's appointment. But here again I'm describing a group pattern rather than individual idiosyncrasies. Only during the past few years have I regularly observed students getting up in mid-lecture, leaving the room for a few minutes, then returning. Sometimes they bring back a canned soft drink.
These students intend no disrespect. They are simply transferring a home-grown pattern of snack-and-bathroom break from family room to classroom. They perceive nothing unusual in acting the same way in front of a live speaker and fellow students as they do when they watch television. (A few students manage to remain seated for only 10-15 minutes. Then they get up and leave the classroom. They are exhibiting a less flattering pattern. Either they have diarrhea, as one student told me he did, or they have decided to shut off the "set" or "change channels.")
Today, almost all Americans talk while watching television. Talking is becoming more common in the classroom, as in the movie house, and this also illustrates television's effects on our collective behavior. Not only do my students bring food and drink to class, some lie down on the floor if they arrive too late to get a seat. I have even seen couples kissing and caressing just a few rows away.
New examples of teleconditioning pop up all the time. In each of the past two semesters I've taught introductory anthropology, at least one student has requested that I say publicly "Happy Birthday" to a friend in the class. These students seem to perceive me as a professorial analog of Willard Scott, NBC's Today show weatherman, who offers birthday greetings (to people 100 and over). Long ago I put into my syllabus injunctions against reading newspapers and eating crunchy foods in class. Last semester I felt compelled to announce that I "don't do birthdays."
All these are examples of effects of televiewing on social behavior of young Americans. They are not individual idiosyncrasies (the subject matter of psychology') but new culture patterns that have emerged since the 1950s. As such they are appropriate objects for anthropological analysis. Culture, as defined by anthropologists, consists of knowledge, beliefs, perceptions, attitudes, expectations, values, and patterns of behavior that people learn by growing up in a given society. Above all else, culture consists of shared learning. In contrast to education, it extends well beyond what we learn in school, to encompass everything we learn in life. Much of the information that contemporary Americans share comes from their common exposure to the mass media, particularly television.
TV Content's Cultural Impact
TV content's impact on American culture enters the story when we consider that contemporary Americans share common information and experiences because of the programs they have seen. Again, I learn from my students. The subject matter of introductory anthropology includes the kinship systems of the United States and other societies. One habit I acquired about five years ago takes advantage of my students' familiarity with television. My practice is to illustrate changes in American family structure and household organization by contrasting television programs of the 1950s with more recent examples.
Three decades ago, the usual TV family was a nuclear family consisting of employed father (who often knew best), homemaker mother, and children. Examples include Father Knows Best, Ozzie and Harriet, and Leave It to Beaver. These programs, which were appropriate for the 1950s, are out of sync with the social and economic realities of the late 1980s. Only 16 million American women worked outside the home in 1950, compared with three times that number today. By the mid-1980s, fewer than 10 percent of American households had the composition that was once considered normal: breadwinner father, homemaker mother, and two children. Still, today's college students remain knowledgeable about these 1950s shows through syndicated reruns. Afternoon television is a pop culture museum that familiarizes kids with many of the same images, characters, and tales that their parents saw in recent days of yore.
Virtually all my students have seen reruns of the series The Brady Bunch. Its family organization provides an interesting contrast with earlier programs. It illustrates what anthropologists call "blended family organization." A new (blended) family forms when a widow with three daughters marries a widower with three sons. Blended families have been increasing in American society because of more frequent divorce and remarriage. However, a first spouse's death may also lead to a blended family, as in The Brady Bunch. During The Brady Bunch's first run, divorce remained controversial and thus could not give rise to the Brady household.
The occupation of Mike, the Brady husband-father, a successful architect, illustrates a trend toward upper-middle-class jobs and life-styles that continues on American television today. TV families tend to be more professional, more successful, and richer than the average real-life family (Pearl et al. 1982). More recent examples include the Huxtables (The Cosby Show) and the Keatons (FamilyTies). There are also ultra-rich night-time soap families such as the Carringtons of Dynasty and the Ewings of Dallas. Mike and Carol Brady were wealthy enough to employ a housekeeper, Alice. Mirroring American culture when the program was made, the career of the wife-mother was part time and subsidiary, if it existed at all. Back then, women like Carol Brady who had been lucky enough to find a wealthy husband didn't compete with other women-even professional housekeepersāin the work force.
I use familiar examples like The Brady Bunch to teach students how to draw the genealogies and kinship diagrams that anthropologists use routinely in fieldwork and in making cross-cultural comparisons. TV family relationships may be represented with the same symbols and genealogical charts used for the Bushmen of the Kalahari Desert of southern Africa, or any other society. In particular, I chart changes in American family organization, showing how real-life changes have been reflected in television content, with which students tend to be familiar. The Brady Bunch, for example, illustrates a trend toward showing nontraditional families and households. We also see this trend in day-time soaps and in prime time, with the marital breakups, reconciliations, and extended family relationships of Dallas, Dynasty, Falcon Crest, and Knot's Landing. The trend toward newer household types is also obvious in Kate & Allie and The Golden Girls.
Students enjoy learning about anthropological techniques with culturally familiar examples. Each time I begin my kinship lecture, a few people in the class immediately recognize (from reruns) the nuclear families of the 1950s. They know the names of all the CleaversāWard, June, Wally, and Beaver. However, when I begin diagramming the Bradys, my students can't contain themselves. They start shouting out "Jan," "Bobby," "Greg," "Cindy," "Marsha," "Peter," "Mike," "Carol," "Alice." The response mounts. By the time we get to Carol and Alice, almost everyone is taking part in my blackboard kinship chart. Whenever I give my Brady Bunch lecture, Anthropology 101 resembles a revival meeting. Hundreds of young natives shout out in unison names made almost as familiar as their parents' through television reruns.
As the natives take up this chantālearned by growing up in post-1950s Americaāthere is an enthusiasm, a warm glow, that my course will not recapture until next semester's rerun o...
