Glorifying the Simple Life Qualitative and Quantitative Analyses of Socio-Psychological Constructs in the Context of Reality TV

Reality TV is a rather new television genre whose fast dissemination attracted attention in the last decades. Comprising numerous subgenres that revolve around ordinary people, it differs from traditional television genres, and thus is assumed to elicit also different responses in viewers. Despite its excellent viewing figures, to date no research has examined the reasons why so many people watch reality TV. Therefore, this work explores reality TV viewing motivations, concentrating on social motives. This thesis is based on the uses and gratifications approach that concentrates on audience members’ needs and gratifications to explain why people use certain media. However, the approach had to face some criticism as prior research on mass media motivations did not thoroughly investigate the reasons behind viewers’ motivations. By examining the relationship between media gratifications and their social and psychological origins on the one hand and consequences on the other hand, this work approaches these weaknesses of the uses and gratifications approach. To answer the question why people watch reality TV, different methods were applied. A qualitative study was carried out to find out more about viewers’ social motives by content-analyzing qualitative interviews and online discussions on various reality TV programs. The results of this study were further explored in four experimental studies. These experiments concentrated on socio-psychological constructs and their determinants and consequences. Two of the experiments applied vignettes to manipulate the independent variables, while the other two experiments applied actual reality TV video clips. The analyses identified the four socio-psychological constructs identification with a media character, schadenfreude, social comparison, and vicarious embarrassment as important responses in the context of reality TV. The qualitative study revealed numerous determinants of those responses and identified schadenfreude and vicarious embarrassment as motives to watch reality TV. While most of the determinants were verified in the experimental studies, the constructs were also linked to consequences. In particular, schadenfreude and identification were identified as positive responses for the viewer. Vicarious embarrassment was found to be a rather complex response that elicits diverse consequences. Social comparison with its upward and downward forms was found to be very important during the consumption of reality TV programs and also serves as a moderator for the relationship between the identified determinants and associated sociopsychological constructs.