How real is the portrayal of aggression in television entertainment programming?

Abstract

How realistic is the portrayal of aggressive behavior in entertainment programming on television? An answer to this question is operationalized in terms of (1) replicated reality and (2) contextualized reality. Replicated reality is assessed by comparing the characteristics of televised portrayals to real world characteristics, such as the demographics of the perpetrators and victims. The contextual reality is an inference built from the variables of intention, motivation, reward, consequences, humor, and realism of the portrayal. The data base for the analysis contains 3,844 acts of aggression found in a composite week of 100.5 hours of entertainment programming. The results present evidence for replicated reality on the patterns of seriousness of the aggression, as well as gender patterns of perpetrators and victims. However, portrayals of race and age were not found to be close to real world patterns of aggression. As for contextual reality, the findings did not support a morality play template. But interesting differences were found among the contextual variables across degrees of realism.

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