The Instructional Capacity of Reality Television: Learning Survival Strategies from Survival Shows

Abstract

One of the broadcast industry’s early forays into reality television, Rescue 911, was credited with teaching viewers life-saving techniques; however, this notion was never empirically tested. A new spate of reality shows, such as I Survived…, presents another opportunity to assess the teaching potential of these programs. To this end, this study, guided by social learning theory, explored whether media exposure influenced the type or number of survival strategies that individuals intended to use in a life-threatening situation. We conducted two experiments in which participants were randomly assigned to view a video of an individual describing his or her escape from a perilous situation and then asked what they would do to survive a similar threat. In comparison to participants who did not view the videos, viewers were more likely to mention using survival strategies depicted in the show, thus supporting assertions about the instructional capacity of some reality shows.

Keywords

• experimental design
• reality television
• social learning
• survival strategies
• violence