Television and Social Behavior by Stephen B. Withey Ronald P. Abeles

Author:Stephen B. Withey, Ronald P. Abeles [Stephen B. Withey, Ronald P. Abeles]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9781138988569
Barnesnoble:
Publisher: Taylor & Francis
Published: 2016-02-28T00:00:00+00:00

Effects of Misleading Stereotypes of Occupational Roles

Of prime importance, from the standpoint of the potential role of television in the socialization of children and youth in our society, are the effects of explicit or implicit messages conveyed by television contents that induce personal scripts pertaining to vital decisions. Consider, for example, the complaints made by representatives of large scientific associations and technological organizations that many bright young people are not choosing careers in science or engineering because scientists and engineers are so often depicted in television stories as evil, power-hungry, and socially irresponsible. To what extent are such complaints based on factually accurate assumptions? Will a content analysis of popular entertainment programs show an imbalance in the direction of unwarranted negative portrayals of scientists and engineers? If so, do the stereotyped portrayals affect the beliefs and attitudes of the young people who see the programs? Do those beliefs and attitudes in turn affect their occupational choices?

Similar questions need to be answered by systematic content analysis, opinion surveys, and audience-response analysis of the portrayals in everyday television fare of each major type of occupation. A pioneering study by Himmelweit, Oppenheim, and Vince (1958) indicated that children who viewed television regularly knew more about prestigeful occupations than those who did not have access to television. This finding has been interpreted as suggesting that children can pick up and remember incidental information accurately from viewing television.

A number of studies cited by Leifer and Lesser (1976) indicate that children from preschool age through sixth grade absorb some information about occupations from entertainment television. There are also indications that children's attitudes can be influenced by television: children who are heavy viewers are more likely than those who are light viewers to express biased stereotypes, such as the view that professional jobs are appropriate for men but not for women. Other studies, most notably a well-known one by Lesser (1974), indicate that educational programs like “Sesame Stret” can convey to young children an accurate view of the activities involved in various forms of work, including information that they might have no other way of learning about. Although unwilling to draw any definitive conclusions from the limited set of studies now available on the effects of television, Leifer and Lesser (1976) offer the following plausible suppositions:

Young children do develop concepts about careers very early in thier lives, but because their information and experience are fragmentary, their concepts are narrow and sterotypic.

Once early stereotypes are formed, and no concerted effort is made to counter them, they persist into adolescence and young adulthood with only superficial improvements and expansions based on a child's personal experiences with employed persons.

The majority of adolescents and young adults thus make career decisions while relatively uninformed of the range and variety of opportunities available to them and of the exact nature of the occupations within that range [p. 40].

Download

Copyright Disclaimer:
This site does not store any files on its server. We only index and link to content provided by other sites. Please contact the content providers to delete copyright contents if any and email us, we'll remove relevant links or contents immediately.