Personality, Risk Taking Behaviors and Reality Television

Saint Anselm College
Erin Hegarty


Results

       Survey reports reveal that all participants, with the exception of one, had watched reality television at some point.  Participants reported television use by rating various genres on a Likert scale (1=less than 1hr/week, 7=more than 21hrs/week).  By doing a median split, a score between 10 and 40 meant the participant reported low television use, and a score between 41 and 70 meant high television use.  Only one
participant reported high television use, meaning 37 participants engage in low television use.  Through self-report most participants reporting liking reality television because it is funny and entertaining (28.9%) and shows real people (21.1%).  It is interesting to note that when reporting why they did not like reality television, the most popular answer was because it is fake (57.9%).    The most popular genres of television were sports events (26.3% watching 5-7hrs/week) and situational comedies (50% watching 1-3hrs/week).  The reports for watching reality television reveal 52.6% watch less than 1 hr/week.  The percentage of time spent watching reality television as reported bythe participants can be seen in Table 1.

    
      The participants were given a score for both adventurous risk taking and impulsive risk taking, with higher scores meaning higher risk taking.  A bivariate correlation was used to determine if there was a relationship between risk taking behavior and which type of reality television was preferred (real world, dating competition, or physical competition).   There was a significant positive correlation between impulsive risk taking and interest in watching physical competition (r =.018, p=.381), as well as how often the participants would watch a physical competition (r =.550, p=.001).

      
       A bivariate correlation was also performed in order to look at the relationship between personality traits as determined by the NEO-FFI and each of the three types of reality television.  There was a significant positive correlation between extraversion and how much the 'characters' shown in the physical competition were like the participants   (r =.335, p=.040).  There was a significant negative correlation between openness and interest in watching a reality show featuring physical competition (r = -.413, p=.010).

       A significant negative correlation was found between extraversion and how often the participants would watch real world reality television (r = -.337, p=.039), as well as a significant negative correlation between openness and interest in real world reality television (r = -.467, p=.003).  Interestingly, there was a significant positive correlation between neuroticism and interest in real world television (r =.354, p=.029).

       With regard to dating competition, there was a significant negative correlation between conscientiousness and interest in a dating competition (r = -.338, p=.038), as well as a significant negative correlation between conscientiousness and how often the participants would watch a dating competition (r =-.385, p=.017).  There was also a significant positive correlation between neuroticism and interest in watching a dating competition (r =.392, p=.015), as well as neuroticism and how often the participants would watch a dating competition (r =.331, p=.042).  A correlation matrix showing this data can be found in Table 2.

     
       An independent samples t-test was used to look at the relationship between gender and the genre of television preferred according to survey reports.  There were significant differences between the sexes watching sports news (t=4.958, df=36, p=.001).  Also, there were significant differences when watching sports events (t=2.384, df=36, p=.023).  These gender differences can be seen in Figure 1 and Figure 2.
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Tables and Figures


Table 1

Hours spent watching reality television.
 
 

 Hours
Frequency
Percent
less than 1 hr/week
20
52.6
1-3 hrs 
13 
34.2
3-5 hrs
3
7.9
5-7 hrs
1
2.6
more than 21 hrs
1
2.6
Total
38
100

 
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Table 2

Relationships between personality variables and reality television.
 
 
 

how often watch real world real world interest how often watch dating comp. dating comp. interest how often watch phys. comp. phys. comp. interest phys. comp. people like you
Extraversion
-.337*
-.250 
-.181 
-.240 
-.009 
 -.162 
.335*
Openness
-.264
-.467**
-.190
-.294
-.305
-.413*
-.222
Neuroticism
.300
.354*
.331*
.392*
.073
-.023
-.212
Conscientiousness
-.118
-.160
-.385*
-.338*
.039
-.079
.211
Impulsivity
-.230
-.172
-.210
-.188
.550**
.381*
.042

 
 
note:  * correlation is at the .05 level 

** correlation is at the .01 level

 

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Figure 1

Figure 1

                  Differences between the mean scores of males and females watching sports news.
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Figure 2

Figure 2

             Differences between the mean scores of males and females watching sports      

             events.
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