TV



Presidents pre/post TV

FDR - Wheelchair, Waldorf hotel, could hide without tv JFK/Nixon - television debates

History Students: Discuss the events above, and the differences between running for and being president before and after TV. Psych Students: Discuss the differences before/after TV in terms of: body language, gestures/facial expressions, attraction & other social psych terms

Psych Ideas

Television a powerful medium.
 * Medium/channel >> is what a message is sent through.

gestures** are nonuniversal
 * facial expressions** are known as universal

[|Bobo Doll Experiment Source] This experiment was completed at Stanford University. With a 36 girls and 36 boys, all being seperately placed in the room with an adult. As described the each child would have high interest value toys, such as potato prints and dolls. The adult in another corner of the room had tinker toys and the bobo doll and a mallet. Half of the children were presented with aggressive behaviors from the adult, which included kicking, beating bobo doll with the mallet, and saying impolite phrases.
 * Bobo Doll Experiment** was done by Bandura

The child would be put into another play room, instead of a 5ft bobo doll, there was a 3ft bobo doll for the child to interact. The room also have other aggressive toys such as dart guns, and nonaggressive toys such as dolls and cars. The adults would attempt to spark aggression in the children by telling them the toys were reserved for others, or that they ran out of time to play with a certain toy.
 * Aggression** was sparked at a higher rate in boys than the girls, and **imitation** is another important factor in influence. Same-sex adult and child, had more effect on the child. Due to the ability for the child to compare with the adult.

Children exposed to aggression on television are more likely to act and play aggressively towards others in play.

" A person who habituates to violence grows accustomed to it, so it does not cause the alarm or disgust it might cause upon first encounter. That might be the main negative side effect from exposing children to large amounts of violent behavior on television: to make people think violence is normal." [|Source from Psych Web] "Media commentators were quick to point out that the Columbine High gunmen were fans of the videogame //Doom//. However, violent videogames are just as popular in Japan as they are in the United States. Japan has a very low murder rate and no reports of gun violence in schools, so it is difficult to argue that videogames are to blame for school shootings." [|School Shooting Source via Psych Web]

[|Children and Ads] [|15yr study with TV violence] [|Links on Violence with Media]

Attributions ** are inferences that people draw about the causes of events, others' behavior, and their own behavior.
 * Attribution Theory

Attributions are created when:
 * unusual events grab our attention
 * events have personal consequences for us
 * others behave in unexpected ways


 * Mere exposure effect-** is a prediction that our attitude towards someone ot something will become more positive with continued exposure.

First comes the **source [communicator]** deliever a persuasive message To be most influential Two other important factor that an audience has a higher chance of changing an attitude: similarity** In some cases attractiveness relates to intelligence and can be a big factor in persuasion.
 * Persuasion** is a key aspect of television.
 * **they must have credibility**
 * expertise
 * trustworthiness
 * power
 * attractiveness

Women are known to be more easily persuaded than men. Younger individuals are easier to manipulate and change their views. It becomes harder when preexisting attitudes are not set in stone.
 * Latitude of Acceptance:** is a range of potentially accpetable positions on an issue, cnetered on one's initial attitude position. Message falls within a recievers LATITUDE allows higher chances of switching views.
 * Central Route:** ponder the content and logic of the message. [LONGEST LASTING EFFECT]
 * Peripheral route processing:** this is taken when persuasion depends on nonmessage factors (attractiveness, credibility of the source and emotional responses)

[|Main Source: Psych Web through an online textbook]

**US History Ideas** FDR - Wheelchair, Waldorf hotel, could hide without tv JFK/Nixon - television debates

History Students: Discuss the events above, and the differences between running for and being president before and after TV.  FDR [|Picture citation > FDR] During the 1944 campaign Franklin D Roosevelt used the Waldorf hotel private railway entrance and gave a foreign policy address at the Waldorf and then descended into the "basement" to the presidential rail car for the journey home to Hyde Park. [|Station at Waldorf Hotel] This occured more than once with FDR using the secret entrance from the Waldorf, this gave FDR the ability to not appear in public in his wheelchair. -There are few pictures in which FDR appears in a wheelchair, in public places he would have a cane and have his hips and legs supported with iron braces. He had no desire to show the United States that he couldn't stand, because he thought it was a weakness. Especially with FDR being President during the Great Depression, he wanted to symbolize strength. -The fact is that FDR was able to hide his disability, due to no television. Even when venturing out to public, he would have an aid or one of his son's supporting him as he walked about.



[|FDR info & possible picture]

JFK/Nixon - television debates **September 23, 1952 -- Richard Nixon's "Checkers" Speech** Oddly, it was Richard Nixon who discovered the political power of the new medium. Richard Nixon, who was pilloried by the press throughout his career, nonetheless discovered the salvific influence of television. Imaginatively, aggressively, Mr. Nixon used television in a way it had never been used before to lay out his personal finances and his cultural virtues and, hence, to save his place on the Republican national team (and, ultimately, his place in the American political pantheon). That same year, 1952, also witnessed the first televised coverage of a national party convention and the first TV advertisements. But it was Nixon's famous speech that turned the tide from a party-based to a candidate-controlled political environment. By using television as he did--personally, candidly, visually (his wife Pat sat demurely next to him during the broadcast)--Mr. Nixon single-handedly created a new political style.

**January 25, 1961 -- John Kennedy's Press Conference** Before Ronald Reagan and Bill Clinton there was John Kennedy. No American president has better understood television than these three. By holding the first live press conference in the nation's history, Kennedy showed that boldness and amiability trump all suits in an age of television. In his short time in office Mr. Kennedy also showed (1) that all communication, even presidential communication, must be relational; (2) that the substance of one's remarks is irrelevant if one cannot say it effortlessly; (3) that being "on line" and "in real time" bring a special energy to politics. Prescient as he was, Mr. Kennedy would therefore not have been surprised to learn that 50% of the American people now find television news more believable and more attractive than print news (which attracts a mere quarter of the populace). Mr. Kennedy would also not be surprised at the advent of CNN, the all-news, all-day channel, nor would he be surprised to learn that C-SPAN (Congress' channel) has also become popular in certain quarters. Being the innovator he was, John Kennedy fundamentally changed the temporal dimensions of American politics. Forever more, his successors would be required to perform the presidency during each moment of each day they held office. [|BOTH NIX&JFK this link.]

Televised Debate: The Great Debates marked television's grand entrance into presidential politics. They afforded the first real opportunity for voters to see their candidates in competition, and the visual contrast was dramatic. In August, Nixon had seriously injured his knee and spent two weeks in the hospital. By the time of the first debate he was still twenty pounds underweight, his pallor still poor. He arrived at the debate in an ill-fitting shirt, and refused make-up to improve his color and lighten his perpetual "5:00 o'clock shadow." Kennedy, by contrast, had spent early September campaigning in California. He was tan and confident and well-rested. "I had never seen him looking so fit," Nixon later wrote. In substance, the candidates were much more evenly matched. Indeed, those who heard the first debate on the radio pronounced Nixon the winner. But the 70 million who watched television saw a candidate still sickly and obviously discomforted by Kennedy's smooth delivery and charisma. Those television viewers focused on what they saw, not what they heard. Studies of the audience indicated that, among television viewers, Kennedy was perceived the winner of the first debate by a very large margin. [|^^^ source]

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