Psychological Effects of Gossip Girl, Game of Thrones and Breaking
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ADVERTIMENT. Lʼaccés als continguts dʼaquesta tesi queda condicionat a lʼacceptació de les condicions dʼús establertes per la següent llicència Creative Commons: http://cat.creativecommons.org/?page_id=184 ADVERTENCIA. El acceso a los contenidos de esta tesis queda condicionado a la aceptación de las condiciones de uso establecidas por la siguiente licencia Creative Commons: http://es.creativecommons.org/blog/licencias/ WARNING. The access to the contents of this doctoral thesis it is limited to the acceptance of the use conditions set by the following Creative Commons license: https://creativecommons.org/licenses/?lang=en UNIVERSITAT AUTONOMA DE BARCELONA PSYCHOLOGICAL EFFECTS OF GOSSIP GIRL, GAME OF THRONES AND BREAKING BAD ON THE LEBANESE AUDIENCE By: TAMARA NOELLE ALICIA ABI-KHALIL Under the direction and supervision of: DR. ANTONI CASTELLO TARRIDA A thesis submitted in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Ph.D. in Psychology of Communication and Change to the Department of Basic, Developmental and Educational Psychology at the Autonomous University of Barcelona 2019 ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS It would not have been possible for me to complete my thesis without the help and support of certain people. First and foremost, I would like to thank my thesis director, Dr. Antoni Castelló Tarrida, who has constantly guided, supported, and encouraged me throughout this journey. Thank you for teaching me so much; on the academic level with your personal and expert guidance in the world of statistics, as well as your tremendous administrative help when the language barrier intervened, and on the personal level by teaching me that this journey needs a lot of patience and even more stress management. It was an honor to be your thesis advisee. I would also like to thank the jury members, for taking the time to read and comment on my work, and for fairly judging my research. I would like to extend a thank you to Remy Elias, my dear friend who took the time to accompany me through my quantitative methodology struggles, and was always ready to review my work and advise me on my next steps. I would have never gotten everything done without your tremendous help. Thank you for being a true friend. Thank you to Maryann Hayek and Jeffrey Lawandos, for their patience and time dedication that allowed my qualitative research to come to life with significant findings. My acknowledgement extends to Jeffrey’s expertise in statistics, and to the time he took to insure, as an extra pair of eyes, that my statistical information was authentic. Thank you to each and every participant who took the time to fill out my surveys and therefore, allowed me to yield interesting findings. All of this experience would have never been possible without the tremendous support, both emotionally and financially, of my beautiful parents, Marcel and Carol Abi-Khalil. Thank you for accepting my emotional rollercoaster throughout these three years. Thank you to my wonderful brother, who never ceased to remind me that giving up is never an option. I want to add a special thank you to my wonderful therapist and friend, Chady Rahme, as well as my coach and godmother, Carmela Puglisi, both of whom accompanied me emotionally and showered me with their positive energy. i ABSTRACT This research investigates the psychological effects of American television series on the Lebanese audience. The research was split into two studies: the first study was a quantitative analysis of the theories of identification and social learning, applied on a Lebanese female audience who watched the series Gossip Girl and Game of Thrones. The second study was a qualitative analysis of the theory of desensitization applied on two Lebanese participants, each watching respectively the series Breaking Bad and Game of Thrones. In the first study, a total of 115 Lebanese female participants were split into two groups: 75 participants who had watched only Gossip Girl and had an average age of 18 years old, and 40 participants who had watched both Gossip Girl and Game of Thrones and had an average age of 25 years old. The participants completed a survey based on the Wishful Identification Scale, the Parasocial Interaction Scale, the Attitude Similarity Scale, the Character’s Attributes Scale, the Connectedness Scale, and the Social Group Setting Scale. A T-Test and a Chi-Square analysis revealed that the Lebanese female audience of Group 1, with the average age of 18 years old, found similarities with the characters of the series Gossip Girl, which affected their identification with the characters, and their imitation of the characters’ attitudes. Further, the analysis revealed that the Lebanese female audience of Group 2, with the average age of 25 years old, watched and discussed the series Game of Thrones in a social group setting, which allowed the participants to build parasocial interactions with the characters and identify with them. In the second study, two participants were chosen based on the fact that one had never watched Breaking Bad and the second had never watched Game of Thrones. The participants were interviewed pre-series, and then interviewed throughout the exposure to several episodes. The qualitative in-depth analysis of the interview answers led to the results that after repeated exposure to Game of Thrones and Breaking Bad, the Lebanese viewer, even if already tolerant to on-screen violence, experienced desensitization signs to the violence, drugs, incest and rape portrayed on-screen in these two series. Findings of these results are discussed, along with the limitations, the contribution to knowledge it offers, as well as possible future research directions. Keywords: Television Series, Identification, Social Learning, Desensitization. ii TABLE OF CONTENTS ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS …………………………………………………………………..i ABSTRACT…………………………………………………………………………………...ii CHAPTER I: INTRODUCTION .......................................................................................... 1 Objectives.......................................................................................................................... 1 Hypothesis ......................................................................................................................... 2 Structure of the thesis ....................................................................................................... 3 CHAPTER II: LITERATURE REVIEW ............................................................................... 5 A- Miscellaneous Effects of Television ............................................................................. 5 B- Identification with Media Characters on Television Shows ........................................ 11 C- Social Learning and Television .................................................................................. 17 D- Violence in the Media ................................................................................................ 21 E- Desensitization to Media Violence ............................................................................. 26 F- Gossip Girl, Game of Thrones, Breaking Bad ............................................................ 30 CHAPTER III: THEORETICAL FRAMEWORK ............................................................... 50 A- Social Learning and Identification ........................................................................... 50 1. A psychological approach to Identification ....................................................... 51 2. Wishful identification, and similarities .............................................................. 54 3. Connectedness .................................................................................................. 55 4. Vicarious experience ......................................................................................... 57 5. Imitation ............................................................................................................ 58 6. Parasocial interaction ........................................................................................ 59 7. Social group setting .......................................................................................... 60 B- Desensitization ................................................................................................................. 62 1. Nature of the perpetrator .................................................................................... 63 2. Justification of violence .................................................................................... 64 3. From aversion to enjoyment ............................................................................... 65 4. Decrease of emotional responsivity ................................................................... 65 5. Aggressive thoughts ........................................................................................... 66 CHAPTER IV: METHODOLOGY .................................................................................... 68 A- Quantitative Methodology ....................................................................................... 68 1. Hypothesis ......................................................................................................... 68 2. Conceptualization of variables ........................................................................... 69 3. Research design and methods............................................................................. 70 4. Research participant sample ..............................................................................