the influence of fashion on mediated beauty in white and black female adolescents.

   

Name of Student Here MiniPaper 2 Ward, L.M. (2002). Does television exposure affect emerging adults’ attitudes and assumptions

about sexual relationships? Correlational and experimental confirmation. Journal of Youth and Adolescence, 31(1), 1 – 15.

In the article “Does Television Exposure Affect Emerging Adults’ Attitudes and

Assumptions About Sexual Relationships?” L. Monique Ward explains a correlation between

television viewing and young adult attitudes towards sex. Other studies have shown a connection

between the type of television young men and women watched and their attitudes toward gender

stereotypes. Ward conducted a study in which the participants were asked to watch and respond

to selected clips, answer a questionnaire about their viewing habits and about their viewing

involvement.

A sample of 259 college students volunteered for the study, only knowing that it was a

psychology study about relationships. Of those participating, 64% were female and the majority

of the students were Caucasian. The participants were asked about their attitudes towards

sexuality, gender roles, and their friends’ sexual habits. In order to measure the attitudes towards

sexuality, the questionnaire had 36 statements based on the stereotypes previously mentioned

asking for responses using the six-point scale of “Strongly Disagree” to “Strongly Agree.”

Attitudes towards gender roles were measured using 12 statements with a four-point response

system. Finally, to measure the students’ ideas about the sexual activity of their peers, the

participants estimated how many males and females they thought had been involved in 12 risk-

related sexual behaviors.

The participants were also asked how often they watched television and what types of

programs they watched. The study was primarily concerned with soap operas, sit-coms, music

videos, and drama. Secondly, the questionnaire asked how involved participants were in the

   

shows they watched. Twenty-four statements rated on a six-point scale were used to gauge

audience involvement. Participants responded with whether they try to predict the outcome of a

plot or if they schedule their day around a particular show coming on.

In groups of 25 – 30 or groups of 8 - 10, students (not including a control group) were

assigned to watch tapes with six different video clips depicting some sort of relationship

interaction and answer three questions asking how they felt about the clips. The clips were

selected from popular sit-coms and soap operas. They were chosen for themes of one of the three

stereotypes: dating as a game, women as sexual objects, or men as sex-driven creatures. An

additional six clips with no sexual content were chosen as the control stimulus. Each tape

contained four stereotype clips and two non-sexual ones. The questions students responded to

were:  “(1) How entertaining or funny is this clip?” (2) “How realistic do you believe the actions

are?” (3) “To what extent can you identify with the characters?”

The amount of television and music videos watched by the students varied a great deal.

Overall, the participants did not agree with the sexual stereotypes they were asked about.

However, “[i]n comparison to men, women were less traditional in their gender role attitudes,

less supportive of the 3 sexual stereotypes, and assumed more sexual experience of their male

peers” (p. 7). In particular, it was found that viewers who watched more television and allowed

themselves to get more involved in the shows that they watch tended to agree with the

stereotypes of the sex-hungry male, dating is a game, and that women are sexual objects. For the

women in this study, the biggest predictors of their stereotype acceptance seemed to be stronger

entertainment motives for TV use and exposure to a stereotype stimulus in the experiment.

Men in both the experimental groups and the control groups endorsed sexual stereotypes

pretty much to the same extent, and low versus high viewing amounts didn’t make a difference

   

there either. In general, the men’s attitudes and their beliefs about peers’ sexual experience did

not appear to vary by exposure to the clips, which had been drawn from prime-time

programming, or with their reported frequency of viewing prime-time programming. In her

Discussion section, Ward proposed that the genres she used in this study are less influential on

men. She implies that the experiment could be replicated with media stimuli from genres that

are more male-oriented, such as music videos and men’s magazines.

Race or ethnicity appeared to be a variable. For example,

[b]eing Asian correlated with stronger agreement that women are sex objects, while being Latina correlated with greater acceptance of dating as a game. Being Asian was also associated with lower expectations of the level of sexual experience of female peers; being Black was associated with higher expectations about peers’ sexual experiences. (pp. 7 – 8)

However, Ward implied that her sample lacked enough demographic diversity to really

understand what the variables of class, ethnicity (including race), and peer group culture

contribute.

Despite the small sample size and the unnatural experimental condition, Ward perceives a

link between media exposure and attitudes towards relationships. She assumes that television

portrayals strengthen the belief in stereotypes and can give false assumptions about peers’ sexual

experience. Because of prior research in psychology that shows sexual decision making is

affected by people’s belief in gendered sex roles, she thinks television can indirectly influence

young people’s sexual decision-making.