“Married at First Sight” is what
some are calling a “groundbreaking” new reality television show that debuted
this summer on the FYI network. The show features four self-proclaimed love
experts who use their skills to pair up six singles who, for some reason,
willingly choose to say their “I do’s” to a complete stranger. After featuring
the three couples’ weddings, the show then documents each couple for five weeks
as they proceed to get to know the person they just married and THEN decide
whether or not to get a divorce. I
included a clip of the show’s trailer below just in case you were having
trouble believing that this kind of entertainment is actually allowed on
television.
When we were having our class
discussion last week about the article, “Isn’t it Roantic? Differential
Associations Between Romantic Screen Media Genres and Romantic Beliefs”, I know
this television show came up briefly but I wanted to discuss it more in depth
for my blog post. This new reality show stands out in my mind because it
presents a potential new way to look at one of the hypotheses in the article.
Specifically, hypothesis three proposed that higher exposure to marriage theme
television shows would be associated with stronger endorsement of love at first
sight ideology (Lippman, 2014). Support
was found for this hypothesis as well as an unexpected result that higher
exposure to marriage theme television shows was associated with higher
endorsement of idealization -- the idea that true love will be nearly perfect
(Lippman, 2014). When I originally read the results of this hypothesis, I was
not surprised. If you’re watching a lot of television that glorifies marriage,
it does not sound odd that you would be more inclined to believe in love at
first sight and that once you find the right person, you’re love will be almost
perfect. But when I thought about a show such as “Married at First Sight”, I
started to second-guess how the results of this hypothesis might hold up. Prior
to viewing a show like this, the concept of “love at first sight” was always a
pretty abstract thing. When, however, it is literally played out in front of
you on television as two people agree to bind their love forever after seeing
each other for the first time, you start to question how people could buy into
such a concept.
I think it is safe to say that a
show like “Married at First Sight” is very different from many of the shows
included in the research done in this article and articles before it. So my
question is, would the results of this study apply to a show like “Married at
First Sight”? The show would definitely fall under the “marriage-themed reality
show” category but is it possible that frequent viewers of this show would endorse
the idea of love at first sight more so than people who don’t frequently watch
this show? My initial response is that there is no way that can be true but
perhaps that is just me being cynical. In contemplating my position and whether
or not these results would also be true for a show like “Married at First
Sight” I found it interesting to consider the results of hypothesis five.
Hypothesis five predicted that
higher realism, the extent to which viewers see the media as realistic, would
be associated with higher levels of romantic beliefs (Lippman, 2014). This
hypothesis was supported in the results and suggests that higher realism leads
to higher endorsement of the idea of love at first sight (Lippman, 2014). When
taking this hypothesis into consideration, I guess it can be assumed that
hypothesis three might hold up to a show like “Married at First Sight” but
potentially only for viewers with higher levels of perceived realism? I think it would be interesting to do a
similar study to this one but using more radical television shows, such as
“Married at First Sight” or even something like “Dating Naked” which are so
ridiculous in their content that they seem impossible to buy into. To me, it
would appear that even those viewers with the highest levels of realism could
not possibly buy into a show like “Married at First Sight” thus challenging the
results found for hypothesis three but maybe I have just grown too cynical?
Perhaps as television becomes more and more outrageous, it will become more
important for research to move away from the cultivation theory-based ideas and
propose new codes and scripts that can explain the effects that media outlets
can have on viewers. Or maybe it does make more sense to try and ground such
radical entertainment sources with more concrete theories like the cultivation
theory to try and make sense of them all. Or maybe we should all just sit back,
relax, and not even bother to question these shows and their aggressive
attempts to entertain us?
References
Lippman,
J. R., Ward, L. M., & Seabrook, R. C. (2014). Isn’t it roamantic?
Differential associations between romantic screen media genres and romantic
beliefs. Psychology of Popular Media
Culture, 3(3), 128-140. Doi: 10.1037/ppm0000034
