Personality, Risk Taking Behaviors and Reality Television

Saint Anselm College
Erin Hegarty

Method

Participants

            The participants were 38 students (15 male and 23 female) at a small, Catholic, liberal arts college in New England.  The students were enrolled in a General Psychology course and received course credit for their participation. 

Materials

           Three eight minute video segments put together by the experimenter were used to show a dating competition, a physical competition, and an observational show (where people have volunteered to have their lives and relationships taped without receiving a reward or benefit at the conclusion of the show).  A clip of The Bachelor (Fleiss, 2004) showing the bachelor interacting with the many women who were competing for his affection, as well as the women interacting with each other when he was not present (Fleiss, 2004) was used as the example of a dating competition.  Survivor: Vanuatu-Islands of Fire (Burnett, 2004) showing a competition between two teams involving each member diving into water and pulling themselves along a rope line one at a time (Burnett, 2004) was shown as the physical competition.  The Real World (Murray, 2004) was the observational show that was used showing seven people living together in Philadelphia.  The clip showed the housemates learning about the job they would be doing together, as well as an argument between two of the housemates (Murray, 2004).  The clip ended with the resolution of the argument (Murray, 2004).

            A Likert scale was designed for the participants to report their feelings about each show including their familiarity with each show and how interested they would be in watching each show (see Appendix A). An open-ended questionnaire was also created for the purpose of reporting information revealing what they like about their favorite show as well as their own personal definition of reality television (see Appendix B). 

            A scale was used to evaluate how many hours of television per week (1= less than 1 hour, 7= more than 21 hours) the participants spent watching various genres of television (such as soap operas or sit-coms).  This scale was adapted from one designed by Dalto and Ossoff (1996) to measure media use in reference to political information. 

            The NEO Five Factor Test (NEO-FFI) form S for college students created by Costa and McCrae (2003) was administered to identify five personality traits in each participant; extraversion, agreeableness, conscientiousness, openness, and neuroticism.  This test consists of 60 statements which the participants rated on a Likert type scale ranging from "strongly disagree" to "strongly agree".   The internal consistency for this test is .86 for neuroticism, .77 for extraversion, .73 for openness, .68 for agreeableness, and .81 for conscientiousness (Costa & McCrae, 1992).  The reliability of coefficients is .79 for neuroticism, .79 for extraversion, .80 for openness, .75 for agreeableness, and .83 for conscientiousness (Costa & McCrae, 1992).

            The participants were also given a questionnaire containing ten questions about risk taking.  Risk taking in general is engaging in behavior which is likely to have a negative consequence from the risk taker's point of view(Ferguson, Valenti, & Melwani, 1991).  Five of these questions determined adventurous risk taking and five questions determining impulsivity in the narrow sense (impulsive risk taking) adapted from a factor analysis of risk taking done by Ferguson et. al.(1991).  Adventurous risk taking means the individual seeks out experiences which would fulfill desire for excitement (Ferguson et. al., 1991).  Impulsive risk taking involves behavior without thinking about it (Ferguson et. al., 1991). The participants rated statements about each type of risk taking on a scale of one to seven (1=not like me, 7=very much like me).

Procedure

            The participants first signed a consent form confirming their agreement to be in this study.  Following this procedure, the participants were given the NEO-FFI.  Upon completion they were then given the risk taking questionnaire assessing adventurous and impulsive risk taking.  Next the participants rated how many hours per week they watched various genres of television, as well as answered open ended questions giving them the opportunity to explain what they like and dislike about reality television as well as what they like about their personal favorite show.  When these three measures were completed by all participants they were shown the video segments.
 
            This study was done on three different nights.  The video clips were counterbalanced so as to prevent any bias towards one show.  One clip was played for approximately eight minutes.  When the clip ended, the participants were then given a Likert scale to rate their interest in the show.  The second clip was then shown, after which the Likert scale was given to the participants again.  The same procedure was repeated with the third television clip.  The participants were given four minutes after each video clip to fill out the rating scales of each show.  When the participants had finished rating the final show, they were given a debriefing form (see Appendix C) explaining the purpose of the study and explaining the measures that were used.
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