American Association for Public Opinion Research

Television and the Rest of Life: A Systematic Comparison of Subjective ExperienceAuthor(s): Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi and Robert KubeySource: The Public Opinion Quarterly, Vol. 45, No. 3 (Autumn, 1981), pp. 317-328Published by: Oxford University Press on behalf of the American Association for PublicOpinion ResearchStable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/2748608Accessed: 29/10/2009 07:26

Your use of the JSTOR archive indicates your acceptance of JSTOR's Terms and Conditions of Use, available athttp://www.jstor.org/page/info/about/policies/terms.jsp. JSTOR's Terms and Conditions of Use provides, in part, that unlessyou have obtained prior permission, you may not download an entire issue of a journal or multiple copies of articles, and youmay use content in the JSTOR archive only for your personal, non-commercial use.

Please contact the publisher regarding any further use of this work. Publisher contact information may be obtained athttp://www.jstor.org/action/showPublisher?publisherCode=aapor.

Each copy of any part of a JSTOR transmission must contain the same copyright notice that appears on the screen or printedpage of such transmission.

JSTOR is a not-for-profit service that helps scholars, researchers, and students discover, use, and build upon a wide range ofcontent in a trusted digital archive. We use information technology and tools to increase productivity and facilitate new formsof scholarship. For more information about JSTOR, please contact support@jstor.org.

American Association for Public Opinion Research and Oxford University Press are collaborating with JSTORto digitize, preserve and extend access to The Public Opinion Quarterly.

http://www.jstor.org

Television and the Rest of Life: A Systematic Comparison of Subjective Experience

MIHALY CSIKSZENTMIHALYI AND ROBERT KUBEY

TELEVISION'S IMPACT on American life, according to Robinson s (1969, 1972) studies of time budgets, has been responsible for a greater rearrangement of life activities than the automobile. Not only has the time devoted to television cut into time previously committed to other mass media, but it has absorbed significant portions of time formerly spent in social and other leisure activities (Goldsen 1977); Comstock, 1980). The present research offers a behavioral and ex- periential account of TV viewing and addresses the following ques- tions: In what combination of activities is television watching typi- cally embedded? How does the subjective experience of watching television differ from other typical activities? How is TV watching related to one's experience of family life?

Previous research on how people feel while watching television has been conducted either in artificial laboratory conditions or re- trospectively, with respondents relying on their memories (Bower,

Abstract One-hundred-four adult workers' affective and cognitive responses to televi- sion were studied via the recently developed Experience Sampling Method in which respondents are supplied with radio controlled electronic paging devices and signaled to report their mood states at random times over the course of a normal week. The activity of television viewing was examined within its typical social contexts (family versus solitary viewing) and in contrast to daily activities such as working, eating, and reading. Television viewing was found to be a relatively unchallenging activity requiring little cognitive investment and consistently tied to feelings of relaxation, passivity, and drowsiness.

Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi is a Professor in the Departments of Behavioral Sciences and Education and Chairman of the Committee on Human Development of the University of Chicago. Robert Kubey is a doctoral student in the Committee on Human Develop- ment of the University of Chicago and a University of Wisconsin Center System Lecturer in Psychology.

Public Opinion Quarterly Vol. 45:317-328 ? 1981 by The Trustees of Columbia University Published by Elsevier North-Holland, Inc. 0033-362X/81/0045-317/$2.50

318 CSIKSZENTMIHALYI AND KUBEY

1973; Steiner, 1963). Few researchers have examined how adults feel while watching TV in their homes or how the subjective experience of viewing contrasts with the variety of other activities which people engage in on a daily basis. For example:

(1) With little supporting empirical evidence, most writers on the subject have assumed that television watching is a passive, uninvolv- ing, and generally boring experience. A minority of observers have suggested that television programs subject the viewer to harmful levels of stress or that they increase existing tensions within the family (Caprio, 1976; Rosenblatt and Cunningham, 1976).

(2) Television is often compared to print media (Krugman, 1977; McLuhan, 1978). Yet very little is known of the differences in people's experience while reading or watching TV. To better under- stand how TV viewing differs from reading we compared the two activities on a number of experiential variables.

(3) Similarly, although little research has been conducted, various observers have feared that the quality of family interaction has been drastically altered by the presence of TV sets in the home. One of the very few empirical studies addressing this concern dates back to Maccoby (1951), who concluded that "the television atmosphere in most households is one of quiet absorption on the part of family members who are present. The nature of the family social life during a program could be described as "parallel" rather than interactive, and the set does seem quite clearly to dominate family life when it is on." One recent study, by Rosenblatt and Cunningham (1976), has sug- gested that TV watching may function as a family coping mechanism and a means for avoiding tense interaction, especially in crowded homes where conflict avoidance through spatial separation is impos- sible. Television, according to these authors, may help to keep some families together by keeping them apart. Our method offers new and unique data on the question of how television watching effects familial experience.

To approach these questions, we have utilized a body of data collected via the recently developed Experience Sampling Method (ESM), which fulfills the requirement of tapping mood states in a relatively unobtrustive manner while people are actually involved in their normal life activities (Csikszentmihalyi et al., 1977).

Method

PROCEDURE

The data were obtained from a sample of 104 adult workers, each of whom filled out self-report forms at random times during a period of

TELEVISION AND THE REST OF LIFE 319

one week. The scheduling of self-reports was controlled by one-way radio communication. Each respondent (R) carried a pocket-sized electronic paging device which was activated by radio signals emitted from a transmitting tower with a 50-mile effective radius. The signals caused the pagers to make a series of audible "beeps" which served as the stimulus for Rs to complete the self-report form. On average, each R was signaled 56 times in a week during the waking hours only. The average number of self-reports completed by each R was 45. The difference between signals sent and reports completed was due to occasional signal failure (3 to 4 per week), and to R's forgetfulness, or to unsuitable circumstances, or because Rs were out of range of the transmitter. Nearly 4,800 records were thus collected. Most of the analyses to follow focus on those 91 Rs who reported watching television at least once during the week.

THE SAMPLE

The sample consisted of full-time male and female employees from five large companies in the Chicago area who volunteered for the study without compensation. Sixty-three percent of the respondents were female, 30 percent single and never married, 80 percent white, and 43 percent over 35 years of age with an age range of 18-63 years. The average annual earned income was about $14,000 and few re- spondents earned a great deal less or more than this figure. Ninety percent of Rs had completed high school, 44 percent worked on assembly line jobs, 29 percent were clerical workers or secretaries, and 27 percent were supervisors, buyers, and engineers.

This sample of full-time working adults is not a representative cross-section of TV viewers. Unemployed and retired persons (Kubey, 1980), and students and housewives, not represented in the sample, may well use and experience television somewhat differently. Though all respondents are working men and women, their reports are still applicable to the research questions posed, and the findings should characterize general trends in viewing. Still, we recognize the need for replication with more representative samples.

In this study, no data were collected as to which programs were being watched when Rs were signaled. We have chosen to emphasize "exposure" and "social context' variables rather than "content," in line with the "uses and gratifications" school (Katz et al., 1973), which has observed that these are the more neglected and basic aspects of media use appropriate for study (see also Hirsch, 1980). Furthermore, we believe that at the outset it is useful to examine television viewing behavior as a total experience without consideration to content, just

320 CSIKSZENTMIHALYI AND KUBEY

as one might examine eating behavior without concern for the types of food consumed.

THE SELF-REPORT FORM

Each R was provided with a bound booklet of self-report forms to complete in response to each signal: (1) Activities which Rs reported were later coded into 20 categories (e.g., working at work, driving, reading, watching TV). (2) They rated their mood and physical states on 7-point scales at the moment signaled; a factor analysis divided these items into two clusters: "affect" (consisting of such variables as cheerful-irritable, relaxed-tense, sociable-lonely), and "potency" (alert- drowsy, strong-weak, active-passive). (3) The quality of R's "cogni- tive" interaction with the environment (whether the subject felt challenged by the activity, whether he or she was concentrating, and how high the person perceived his or her skills for each activity to be).1

Results AMOUNT OF VIEWING

The estimates of time allocation to various activities obtained in this study are consistent with those reported by Robinson and Con- verse (1967), who used diary-based time sampling.2 Over comparable activities the two methods produced a Spearman rank-order correla- tion of .92 (Csikszentmihalyi and Graef, 1980). Robinson and Con- verse's respondents watched approximately 20 percent more televi- sion but this discrepancy may have been because our subjects were not being signaled past 10:00 P.M. when a large percentage of adult TV viewing typically takes place, and because of their working status, which meant they did 85 percent of their television viewing after 5:00 P.M.

I For a discussion of the reliability and validity of the ESM see Csikszentmihalyi and Graef (1980) and Larson et al. (1981). As an example, the average correlation coeffi- cient for individual affect and potency means between the first and second halves of the week was .72, and for the cognitive variables it was .61 (N= 104). In a follow-up study of 28 adolescents, the average correlation between individual means after a two-year interval was .47 for affect and potency, and .61 for the cognitive variables.

2 Respondents reported television watching as a main activity 7.2 percent of the time (344 responses) and as a secondary activity 2.8 percent of the time (136 responses). These figures are almost identical to those reported in studies conducted by Szalai (1972) and Robinson (1977). In total, they add up to an estimated average of 1.5 hours of television watching per person during the 14 hours of each day when beepers were activated. No other leisure activity involved as much time.

TELEVISION AND THE REST OF LIFE 321

SECONDARY ACTIVITIES ACCOMPANYING TELEVISION WATCHING

The design of the self-report form allowed us to ask respondents if they were engaged in a secondary activity in addition to the one which they described as primary. Roughly 10 percent of all primary mealtime activity, for example, was accompanied by television view- ing, and for nearly 25 percent of the time that TV was described as a secondary activity, meals were marked as primary.3 Television watching was also a frequent accompaniment to the main activities of talking (14 percent) and reading (12.5 percent).

Secondary activities were reported as accompanying primary tele- vision watching 67.4 percent of the time. Thus, television occupied Rs' undivided attention during only 32.6 percent of viewing occasions. For our sample, television watching almost always occurred after work and in a context of physical relaxation and orally pleasurable activities.

TV viewing was contrasted with a wide variety of other typical activities. For this discussion the comparison will be limited to four major activities plus a "totarl which includes all activity reports after subtracting those given while watching TV. The four activities are as follows: working at work (all work activity while on the job, excluding such activities as socializing, coffee breaks, and lunch); public leisure (activities such as eating out, parties, sports and games, club meet- ings, and cultural events); idling (waiting, sitting and not doing any- thing, staring out a window, daydreaming); and meals.

Table 1 presents a rank ordering of averaged individual self-report means. Activities whose means were significantly different from TV watching are noted.

COGNITIVE STATES

Television watching in our sample was experienced as the least challenging activity and the one involving the least amount of skill. With the exception of "idling activities," the differences between TV watching and the other activities were quite significant. For example, the mean levels for "concentration," "challenges," and "skills" are

3 Respondents indicated that eating and smoking occurred during 17 percent of primary viewing. This incidence of "oral consumption" activity while watching televi- sion was extremely high compared to its less frequent occurrence in conjunction with other pursuits. Adding talking (18 percent) as another oral pursuit raises the "orarl percentage accompanying TV to over 35 percent. This predominance of talking and eating behavior with television was also observed by Bechtel et al. (1972) and by Allen (1965), who used videotape and film to record viewing behavior in the home.

322 CSIKSZENTMIHALYI AND KUBEY

significantly lower for watching television than the average levels for all other activities combined.4

MOOD STATES

Most notable among the findings in Table 1 is that TV watching is experienced as the most relaxing of all activities; this is consistent

Table 1. Rank Ordering of Individual Self-Report Means in Five Selected Activities and for Total Responses Minus TV Watching

Activities

TV Total Working Public Response Watching Activityc at Work Leisure Idling Meals Variables (N =91)a. b (N =91) (N =91) (N =71) (N =79) (N =82)

Cognition Concentration

(Rank) 4 2d 1* 3 6* 5 (Mean) 4.94 5.29 6.03 5.23 3.83 4.75

Challenges 6 2* 1* 3* 5 4 2.49 3.77 4.84 3.72 2.58 2.65

Skills 6 2* 1* 3d 5 4* 3.74 5.36 6.38 4.90 3.91 4.63

Affect Cheerful-irritable 3 4 5 1* 6* 2

4.89 4.85 4.73 5.50 4.44 5.04 Relaxed-tense 1 5* 6* 2 4* 3

5.36 4.83 4.54 5.28 4.86 5.20 Sociable-lonely 5 3 4 Id 6d 2d

4.74 4.86 4.82 5.62 4.47 5.14 Potency

Alert-drowsy 5 3* 2* 1* 6* 4* 4.76 5.29 5.57 5.76 4.07 5.27

Strong-weak 5 4* 2* 1* 6d 3* 4.48 4.79 4.95 5.09 4.24 4.94

Active-passive 5 3* 1* 2* 6 4* 4.06 4.79 5.08 5.02 3.97 4.60

NOTE: Higher means refer to more positive states. a Number of subjects range from 71 to 91. Only those subjects who reported doing

each activity were included in each analysis. b Total number of signals for each activity are as follows: TV= 344, Total Ac-

tivity=4,447, Working at Work= 1,280, Public Leisure= 116, Idling=411, and Meals = 331.

I Total activity refers to all activities minus television viewing. d Activities whose means are significantly different from TV watching means on a

t-test (two-tails) by a factor of p <.05. *p<.005.

4 People also reported that there was virtually nothing at stake while watching TV. Yet television watching was found to be one of the activities which respondents, when signaled, most frequently checked "wanting to do" as opposed to "having to do." Only when reading or participating in sports and games did people report wanting to do it more often. Our subjects reported "wanting" to watch television with nearly 90 percent of"TV" signals-this in sharp contrast to their "wanting" to work only 15 percent of the time. Thus, television viewing can be thought of as among the most freely chosen activities in which our Rs became involved.

TELEVISION AND THE REST OF LIFE 323

with survey research by Bower (1973) and Steiner (1963), which has also indicated that the public perceives "relaxation" to be among the most characteristic functions of television watching. The degree to which people felt "relaxed" rather than "tense" in our research sug- gests that viewing is usually not the stress-producing experience that some have claimed it to be.

Potency states accompanying TV watching were all relatively low. People tended to report feeling "drowsy," "weak," and "passive" when viewing. Thus, the typical viewing experience is characterized by low feelings of potency, moderate cheerfulness, and high relaxa- tion.

To understand the dynamics of the relaxed TV viewing state in greater depth we chose to focus on relaxation in two other major types of activities: working at work and public leisure. Table 2 shows correlations between level of reported relaxation and the nine cogni- tive, affective, and potency variables. This provides a view of how people experience relaxation in different contexts. When viewing television, relaxation is significantly related to feelings of cheerfulness and sociability. Relaxation at work is also strongly related to these same feelings.

Most striking, however, is that in public leisure activities relaxation was even more intimately tied to cheerfulness and sociability, while at the same time Rs also reported being quite alert, strong, and active, and having high concentration, challenges, and skill. Thus, it is clear that relaxation in other forms of leisure is compatible with heightened cognitive and potency states, while relaxation during television watching is neutral in respect to such states.

Table 2. Correlates of Relaxation in Three Different Activities

Activities

Response Variables TV Watchinga Working at Work Public Leisure

Cognition Concentration - .06 - .02 .65** Challenges - .03 - .16 .49** Skills .07 .13 .57**

Affect Cheerful-irritable .76** .76** .90** Relaxed-tense 1.00** 1.00** 1.00** Sociable-lonely .60** .67** .87**

Potency Alert-drowsy .27* .34** .86** Strong-weak .23* .40** .89** Active-passive .22* .28* .82**

NOTE: All correlation coefficients are Pearson Product Moment Correlations. a Number of respondents and signals are identical to those in Table 1. *p<.05.

**p <.001

324 CSIKSZENTMIHALYI AND KUBEY

Television Viewing in Different Contexts TELEVISION VERSUS READING

Affective states reported while watching TV and while reading are nearly identical. Individual self-report means for the two activities are presented in Table 3. People report being as cheerful, relaxed, and sociable when reading as when they are viewing television. But read- ing, in comparison to television, is experienced as having greater cognitive requirements (more concentration, more challenges, more skills) and involving higher feelings of potency (greater alertness, strength, and less passivity). So, again, in relative terms, television is characterized by reduced mental investment and a drop in feelings of potency.

TELEVISION AND FAMILY LIFE

Of particular interest to social critics of television are its possible effects on family life. Table 4 examines the TV viewing experience as a function of whether the familial experience was altered by television watching.

Television watching was a significantly more challenging, cheerful, and sociable experience with the family than alone. These findings follow the trend of all "alone" experiences, which tend to be more generally negative than "family" experiences, regardless of the ac- tivity engaged in. In other words, as a function of being alone or with

Table 3. Comparison of Subjective States while Watching Television and While Reading

Activities

Response Variables TV Watching (N =344) Reading (N = 182)

Cognition Concentration 4.82 ** 5.72 Challenges 2.39 * 2.90 Skills 3.51 ** 4.97

Affect Cheerful-irritable 4.80 4.89 Relaxed-tense 5.29 5.33 Sociable-lonely 4.68 4.65

Potency Alert-drowsy 4.68 ** 5.12 Strong-weak 4.36 * 4.58 Active-passive 3.90 ** 4.23

NOTE: Comparisons between means were made by t-tests (two-tailed). Higher means refer to more positive states.

*p<.05. **p <.01.

TELEVISION AND THE REST OF LIFE 325

Table 4. Comparison of Subjective States While Watching Television with the Faniily, Compared to Family Interaction Without Television, and Television Watching Alone

Activity and Context

TV Watching Being with the Watching with Family Family Without TV TV Alone

Response Variables (N =201) (N = 923) (N = 105)

Cognition Concentration 4.79 4.99 5.07 Challenges 2.59 3.55** 1.89* Skills 3.42 4.90** 3.37

Affect Cheerful-irritable 4.91 5.00 4.56* Relaxed-tense 5.35 5.00** 5.11 Sociable-lonely 4.93 5.11 4.08**

Potency Alert-drowsy 4.66 5.18** 4.68 Strong-weak 4.33 4.71** 4.37 Active-passive 3.88 4.79** 3.97

NOTE: Comparisons between means were made by t-test (two-tailed). Higher means refer to more positive states.

*p<.05.

the family, the television watching experience is modified in much the same manner as most other activities. One exception is the increased challenges accompanying family viewing, which does not normally differentiate aloneness. Thus, the most striking finding in this com- parison is that TV watching is a considerably more challenging expe- rience when done with the family. Respondents' experiences with their families, however, were clearly affected by the presence of television. When television was being viewed with members of the family, in contrast to being with the family without TV, subjects reported feeling significantly less challenged, less skilled, more re- laxed, less alert, less strong, and less active. The strongest negative changes, then, occurred in the cognitive and potency variables.

To understand such phenomena more fully, we also looked at how the experience of being with one's family was affected by reading newspapers, magazines, or books. As with television, people felt sig- nificantly more relaxed (p<.004), passive (p<.004), and less chal- lenged (p <.035) while reading in the presence of family members than when interacting with them. However, there was no drop in perceived skills or in the other two potency variables as was the case with television.

Discussion

Television viewing was consistently and closely tied to relaxation, to weaker cognitive investments, and to lower feelings of potency

326 CSIKSZENTMIHALYI AND KUBEY

when compared to other activities. The study suggests that this expe- rience is modified to some extent by the context in which people view, but that the general trends associated with TV viewing remain largely intact regardless of context. Affective states appear to change least as a function of TV viewing and potency states are the most vulnerable to change. At the same time, however, our findings may apply only to the viewing experience of adult workers, but not to children or retired persons, for whom television might provide a more active involvement.

It is important to point out that we cannot conclude from this research whether television itself causes all the variations we have observed. In other words, is it the case that when people feel passive or weak they choose television as an activity which accommodates their mood or is it that TV actually causes people to feel more passive and weak? Pearlin (1959), for one, has compared TV viewing to the coping function of alcohol, suggesting that some people use television to withdraw periodically from troubles or stress. Television's influence on moods is surely mediated by a person's affective and cognitive state prior to viewing. The in-depth examination of such affective and behavioral sequences and the relationship of needs to gratifications are intended for future studies.

Goldsen (1977) has observed, as has McLuhan ("the medium is the message"), that most television content is received by viewers in much the same way. There are exceptions, such as live reports of assassi- nations, moon landings, Watergate hearings, or sporting events. Such events do command undivided attention and we respond almost as if we were there. After a few replays, however, these live events be- come part of the sameness of the vast television landscape.

What is the future of television's role in human experience? New developments, such as video games, television with computer inter- face, and home video equipment all involve the common behavioral component of participation. If television viewing is at present a pas- sive enterprise, the future promises to allow the viewer greater oppor- tunities to interact with and exert control over the TV set and its content. Nonetheless, the results of this study suggest that television, in its present form, may frequently be chosen for the very reason that it is unchallenging, relaxing, and relatively uninvolving. To be sure, then, much of television watching in the future will still fulfill these same needs for escape and relaxation. Much of its content will go unchanged because there will be continued demand for such experi- ences. Modern technological innovations, therefore, will only present new and different viewing opportunities in addition to the existing standard forms of television experience.

TELEVISION AND THE REST OF LIFE 327

References

Allen, C. 1965 "Photographing the TV audience," Journal of Advertising Research

5:2-8. Bechtel, R., C. Achelpohl, and R. Akers

1972 "Correlates between observed behavior and questionnaire response on television viewing." In E. Rubinstein, G. Comstock, and J. Mur- ray (eds.), Television and Social Behavior, Vol. 4, Television in Day-to-Day Life: Patterns of Use. Washington, D.C.: Government Printing Office.

Bower, R. 1973 Television and the Public. New York: Holt, Rinehart, and Winston.

Caprio, F. 1976 Personal communication to the authors.

Comstock, George 1980 TV in America. Beverly Hills, Calif.: Sage.

Csikszentmihalyi, M., and R. Graef 1980 "The experience of freedom in daily life." American Journal of

Community Psychology 8:401-14. Csikszentmihalyi, M., R. Larson, and S. Prescott

1977 "The ecology of adolescent activities and experience." Journal of Youth and Adolescence 6:281-94.

Goldsen, R. 1977 "Changing channels: how TV shapes American minds." Human Be-

havior 2:63-67. Gorney, R., D. Loye, and G. Steele

1977 "Impact of dramatized television entertainment on adult males." American Journal of Psychiatry 134:170-74.

Hirsch, P. 1980 "A research agenda for approaching the study of television." Paper

commissioned for the Aspen Institute Conference on Proposals for a Center for the Study of Television.

Katz, E., J. Blumler, and M. Gurevitch 1973 "Uses and gratifications research." Public Opinion Quarterly

37:509-23. Krugman, H.

1977 "Memory without recall, exposure without perception." Journal of Advertising Research 17:7-12.

Kubey, R. 1980 "Television and aging: past, present, and future." Gerontologist

20:16-35. Larson, R., M. Csikszentmihalyi, and R. Graef

1980 "Mood variability and the psycho-social adjustment of adolescence." Journal of Youth and Adolescents 9:469-90.

Maccoby, E. 1951 "Television: its impact on school children." Public Opinion Quarterly

15:421-44. McLuhan, M.

1978 "The brain and the media: the 'western' hemisphere." Journal of Communication 28:54-60.

328 CSIKSZENTMIHALYI AND KUBEY

Pearlin, L. 1959 "Social and personal stress and escape television viewing." Public

Opinion Quarterly 23:256-59. Robinson, J.

1969 "Television and leisure time: yesterday, today and (maybe) tomor- row." Public Opinion Quarterly 33:210-22.

1972 "Television's impact on everyday life: some cross-national evi- dence." In E. Rubinstein, G. Comstock, and J. Murrya (eds), Televi- sion and Social Behavior, Vol. 4, Television in Day-to-Day Life: Patterns of Use. Washington, D.C.: Government Printing Office.

1977 How Americans Use Time: A Social-Psychological Analysis of Everyday Behavior. New York: Praeger.

Robinson, J., and P. Converse 1967 Basic Tables of Time-Budget Date for the United States. Ann Arbor,

Mich.: Survey Research Center. Rosenblatt, P., and M. Cunningham

1976 "Television watching and family tensions." Journal of Marriage and the Family 31:11.

Steiner, G. 1963 The People Look at Television. New York: Knopf.

Szalai, A. (ed.) 1972 The Use of Time: Daily Activities of Urban and Suburban Popula-

tions in Twelve Countries. The Hague: Mouton and Co.