http://www.usatoday.com/news/health/2008-09-15-aggression-study_N.htm?loc=interstitialskip

Meanness appears to rub off on viewers

By Greg Toppo, USA TODAY
Researchers have long known that watching violence on TV or in movies ratchets up aggression, but what about watching people being mean to one another? Could watching Mean Girls make you as aggressive as watching Kill Bill?

A new study suggests the answer is yes.

Brigham Young University professor Sarah Coyne and colleagues asked 53 British college-aged women to watch one of three video clips, featuring either physical aggression (a knife fight from Kill Bill), relational aggression (a montage from Mean Girls) or no aggression (a s

I don’t suppose the subjects were rude because the scientists were rude to them, huh?  I could watch a clip of Barney the Dinosaur and be rude if another person was rude to me.

You know, I wouldn’t be deliberately rude back either but I think that’s because my own nature would find the retaliation on my own part more uncomfortable to me.  However, I also believe that all of us are affected by the treatment of others both good and ill.  If we have been disrespected by another it doesn’t really matter if we posture back because we do file it away somewhere, even if that file is pushed to a hidden spot inside.

Gee. i don’t know.  If a researcherf was rude and mean to me, and then I was asked to a. retaliate, b. give a review, or c. do nothing, I would probably give a poor review. (Irregardless of what I amy have just watched.)  After all, one should be able to set aside one’s own feelings when asked to fill out review cards.  If the researcher was rude and mean to me would I think he/she should be hired…um…NO! 😕

A lot of these studies are self-fulfilling prophecies. They go looking for what they believe, and they find it!  Amazing, huh?  😉

I think sarcasm has become a lot bigger…and I see it a lot more in television.  It’s pretty much the major theme of most sitcoms.  And I noticed my own sarcasm level getting much higher.  I had rarely been sarcastic before I became an avid Friends watcher.

Maegan - 17 September 2008 12:59 PM

I think sarcasm has become a lot bigger…

Noooo, really?

.

😉

I think it is a BS study.
It all depends on the mentality, IQ, emotional and socially of the test subjects.

Besides, if you where asked a bunch of questions after watching a movie, wouldn’t you be ticked off as well.
Well, unless there was a camera in front of you.

*Remembers a MAD TV sketch*

I hate these types of studies.
General apprehension of the local, general populous does not mean nothing.

And there is no real “control” in these types of instances.

I don’t need television to be sarcastic, real life is already idiotic enough.

It would have been more interesting if they also used a control group that was subjected to a life act (actors in waiting room, ...), one part made aware of it, the other not. To see if it is indeed just television or the grittiness of present society.

Besides, Kill Bill is artistic violence, it doesn’t count.  😛