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Reality TV Psychologists: People's Protectors or Sleazy Shrinks?
Sept. 24, 2001 -- No doubt many of the TV networks are hoping that Americans will tune in to so-called reality TV this week, in order to tune out all the harsh reality that's has been broadcast lately.
This week marks the start of the fall TV season, and on the schedule are a slew of reality shows featuring everything from true romance to grand adventure. To help produce them, TV crews have their own psychologists who have been hard at work concocting and monitoring the situations to bring to your screen. And even to the pros, some situations are a push right to the edge.
Take psychologist Richard W. Levak, PhD. He is in charge of screening contestants for CBS reality TV shows such as Survivor, The Amazing Race, and Big Brother 2. He also teaches at the California School of Professional Psychology in San Diego and has written three books on personality testing. As he stood in front of hundreds of his peers at the annual meeting of the American Psychological Association recently, he admitted to a sense of trespass.
Levak acknowledges that it is part of the APA's code of ethics to protect society's values.
"How many of you as psychologists have a gut bad feeling about reality programs?" he asked the crowded lecture hall. Eighty percent raised their hands. "That is just how I feel -- and I'm doing it," he says.
Joining Levak at the presentation titled "Reality TV -- Psychologists in Prime Time," were session chairwoman Kate M. Wachs, PhD, past president of the APA's division of media psychology, and M. Gene Ondrusek, PhD. Ondrusek is the first psychologist to become involved in reality TV, working on the original Survivor and now involved with existing or in-production shows such as Love Cruise, Boot Camp, Combat Mission, Future Diary, The Runner, and Fear Factor. He's also helping to create new shows for various networks.
Wachs notes that four of the five most-watched programs on U.S. television are reality TV shows. She says this is because we have evolved a need to know what our neighbors are up to: that is, whether they are a threat or a sexual opportunity.
Wachs also notes that this is the 30th anniversary of the infamous prison study by Stanford psychologist Philip Zimbardo. Zimbardo randomly assigned students to play the role of guards or prisoners. The study had to be ended when the students acting as guards quickly became abusive toward prisoner students. The experiment led to new ethics guidelines for research.
Wachs says the Zimbardo study shows "how people put in compelling situations can create compelling behaviors." That, she says, is the nature of reality TV. "Finding the compelling nature of something, distilling it, and giving it back to ourselves in a compelling form is in our nature. It's like turning grapes into wine or cocaine into crack."
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