WINSTON-SALEM, N.C. -- The frequency of viewing wrestling on TV was positively associated with date fighting and other health risk behaviors, according to a new study, published by researchers at Wake Forest University School of Medicine and presented at the Pediatric Academic Societies Meeting over the weekend.
This study is in agreement with multiple previous studies by Dr. DuRant that have found that exposure to violence is the strongest correlate with the use of violence and weapon carrying among adolescents.
"This study has tremendous implications," said Robert H. DuRant, professor and vice chair of pediatrics at Wake Forest University School of Medicine and an author of the study. "It shows that exposure to this type of violence on television during this crucial period of time when a teen's cognitive, social and physical development is still being cemented, probably affects adolescents in a negative way."
Adolescents who watch wrestling on TV are exposed to a high frequency of violence between men and women, alcohol use and hearing women referred to in derogatory terms such as "bitch," according to the study. In addition, the scenarios played out in the TV dramas often present violence as a solution to a problem.
"The level of vulgar language, verbal abuse and physical abuse modeled, with unrealistic outcomes, is astonishing," DuRant said. "For example, during one wrestling match a man dangled a woman upside down and then dropped her on her head, knocking her unconscious. In reality, I know this act would have broken her neck and probably would have killed her. In addition, the announcer of the program, speculating on what the wrestler was going to do with the woman, stated that she 'deserved it' because she had cheated on this wrestler earlier. This teaches an adolescent that it is OK to use violence to resolve conflicts and that women deserve abusive treatment."
In this study, researchers asked a random sample of 2,228 North Carolina high school students, how many times they had watched wrestling on TV in the past two weeks. Among males, 35.1 percent had watched wrestling and 24.6 percent had watched it 6 or more times during the previous two weeks. Among females, 35.1 percent had watched wrestling and 9.1 percent had watched it 6 or more times.
Watching wrestling by males was associated with having started a fight with a date, been a date fight victim, gun carrying, other weapon carrying, fighting, spit tobacco use, non-prescription Ritalin use and driving after drinking. Alcohol or drug use during the last fight by the date or by the student was associated with watching wrestling more frequently, according to the study.
Of significance, is that the relationships between watching wrestling and health risk behaviors were stronger among females than among males, DuRant said.
Watching wrestling by females was associated with having started a date fight, been a date fight victim, gun carrying, carrying a gun at school, other weapon carrying at school, fighting, fighting at school, being injured in a fight, alcohol use, alcohol use at school, marijuana use, Ritalin use and riding with a drinking driver. Also, alcohol or drug use by the female student or her date was associated with viewing wrestling more frequently.
"The bottom line is that we are affected by what we expose ourselves to," DuRant said. "This study shows that the incidence of date fighting and other violence increases when the exposure to violence increases. Now, wrestling doesn't in itself cause violence, but when combined with overall socialization, violence on television can affect what is perceived as socially acceptable behavior."
Of the 2,228 students who participated in the study, 51.4 percent were female and 38.3 percent were of minority ethnicity. Other authors of the study are Karen Sigmon Smith with Wake Forest University School of Medicine and Erika Borgerding, a student at Mt. Tabor High School. The Brenner Center for Child and Adolescent Health funded the study.
Please don't just post articles. Feel free to give a link to the articles (posting the whole thing in the thread is kinda pointless), but if you're going to start a topic, have something to say yourself about the topic.
Originally posted by LotusMegamiWhat is "date fighting"? If it means domestic abuse, girlfriend beating, then eupheisms will not help.
"date fighting" sounds fun and kind of kinky.
I find it interesting that according to the study women are more effected than men by watching wrestling. I have no smart-ass response to that, it just seriously confuses me. I just don't picture a bunch of women watching Raw and getting all violent. Maybe getting violently horny if what used to be on the "Ladies Only" forum is any indication, but not just plain violent.
"Bubba, D-Von, J.R., please report to the principal's office..."
"The level of vulgar language, verbal abuse and physical abuse modeled, with unrealistic outcomes, is astonishing," DuRant said. "For example, during one wrestling match a man dangled a woman upside down and then dropped her on her head, knocking her unconscious. In reality, I know this act would have broken her neck and probably would have killed her.
Okay, let's assume that they're talking about the Dudley's table spot, which it certainly sounds like. Putting aside the tabloidish manner in which they described it (dangling a woman upside down and dropping her on her head?), couldn't the same result happen with a man?
In addition, the announcer of the program, speculating on what the wrestler was going to do with the woman, stated that she 'deserved it' because she had cheated on this wrestler earlier. This teaches an adolescent that it is OK to use violence to resolve conflicts and that women deserve abusive treatment."
I've never been a big fan of JR's selective memory when it comes to these things (see Austin, Steve and Kiebler, Stacy), but it's CLEAR that this report is taking this out of context and spinning it into a way that fits their agenda.
And as we all learned reading Foley's book, they give a pretty generous definition of "violence" and "drug use". Heck, in the first segement of this week's RAW, we had:
Verbal abuse of a woman by handicapped man. An attack on a handicapped man. Repeated drug and alcohol abuse. An authority figure forcibly making a woman participate in repeated drug and alcohol abuse. An authority figure making obscene gestures to the audience.
I hate reports like these, because instead of trying to find a solution to a serious problem such as date rape, they instead try and find a scapegoat. And that will NEVER solve the problem.
Does this make any sense? Let's say you're at a restaurant, and you see a man stagger away from the bar and walk directly into the wall, mistaking it for a door, banging his face and falling down, only to pick himself up and walk into the wall again, and then again, over and over. Would you say to yourself: "I admire that man! He is loyal to the tactic of walking into the wall, in the hope that it eventually will turn into a door!"
No! You'd say: "He must be a Cubs fan." -Dave Barry
I've been thinking about this for a while now, partially to answer my questions as to why I'm still loyal to pro wrestling. I won't deny the correlation between violent media like wrestling and aggressive behavior like "date fighting", but I wonder about their conclusions about cause and effect. Perhaps they have it backwards, maybe it's just that more violence-prone people like violent forms of entertainment.
People are scrambling to find out why people are more violent these days than in the recent past. Blaming the media is akin to putting the cart before the horse, I believe. Using violence as entertainment has been done since the beginning on mankind (NOT Mankind, thank you). Most people use it as an outlet for natural aggressive urges. Specifically, wrestling fans live vicariously through the wrestlers. A lot people want to look like the wrestlers (males or females, I suppose), but lack the genetics/means/time/drive to actually attain those physiques. Even more people would love to do the things wrestlers do to each other to people in life that they don't like. With all the different personalities and stereotypes in wrestling, most any fan can find at least one wrestler that emulates a person or personal traits that they dislike in real life. They also identify with one or more other wrestlers that exhibit the traits they admire most (whether they have or wish they had them). To see these opposing forces clash before one's eyes (in a way that people would never be able to act out in real life) is very engaging and allows for the release of pent-up aggression and negative energy.
To me, the rise in violence is because life is much more stressful for average people that it has ever been. This creates unprecedented levels of frustration in some people that traditional outlets can no longer satiate. These people then unleash it on other, real people. The media that they exposed themselves to mostly just gave them ideas on specifically how to act out their negative feelings.
Hmmm...does any of this make sense to anyone else?
Unimaginable is the power of HHH. Anyone who stands against him faces certain doom. (paraphrased from Magus, Chrono Trigger)
I personally just write these reports off. I mean, isn't it more likely that the fan base that wrestling ATTRACTS (not causes) are the wife-beaters and trailer trash? If that's accepted as pretty much fact by the media, then why is it such a HUGE leap to assume that lesser shit-hole people would watch it as well?
Tribal Prophet
Wrestling exists in the eternal present. What is, has always been, and when it no longer is, it never was. It has no past and no future, and sometimes even today is in question. - Madame Manga
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Yeah, this is the same kind of psychological research brilliance as that famous study in the 1950s that associated comic book reading with juvenile delinquincy. How did they come to that conclusion? By asking kids in Juvy if they read comics. Of course they did--every kid in America read comics. Correlation ain't cause and effect.
Dammit, this kind of crap pisses me off. I better go slap my husband around.
People are also constantly saying that society is becoming more violent. I don't think that's really true though, we're just hearing about things more. There was a bit of a lull in the 50's, but things are picking up again. I mean really, wasn't it just a taaaaaaad more violent in the Dark Ages?
Originally posted by CarlCXI feel bad for picking this one thing out, but I've gotta ask:
How could that percentage of people have seen wrestling SIX times or more in the past two weeks? Are there THAT many Velocity/Heat fans?
Exactly. This thing is based purely on survey information, and even worse, survey information from kids. The thing is sometimes people (particularly young people) lie in surveys. And the person conducting the survey was also a high school student. So how can we be sure that responses were not made just to mess with her.
So it says that 24.6% of those surveyed had watched wrestling 6 or more times the previous 2 weeks. I don't believe that. And that brings to question the validity of the whole survey in my mind.
But even if every single person was being honest, there is a difference between correlation and causation. The article only demostrates evidence of the former, and offers nothing for the latter.
Everything that is wrong in this world can be blamed on Freddie Prinze Jr.
Anything negative about wrestling, whether researched through legitmate avenues or not, will be embraced becasue wrestling is hated.
I'd be much more concerned why the violent crime in the States, even when adjusted for population density, is so much higher than for other first-world nations.
What do you call Albert Einstein beatin' off? Give up? A stroke of genius!
I wanted to write another response to this thread, but after everyone pointed out all of the sensible facts that I otherwise would have, I got angry and gave my dog a piledriver.
A study on losing arguments and why we as people should avoid them is underway.
I'm guessing the article didn't state whether these fights started when the girlfriends began putting Test, Nash, Albert, or Trips over...or for that matter, when the boyfriends started staring, open mouthed and drooling, at Trish, Lita, Molly, or Nidia....
2) A freind of mine (still in the W-S) missed a connecting flight because his girlfriend would not get her pizza to go in the airport Za Hut. He did not pile drive, Angle slam, or otherwise punish her. (he does not watch wrestling)
3) Had it been me, I would have given her a stunner.
Originally posted by Battlezone"Bubba, D-Von, J.R., please report to the principal's office..."
"The level of vulgar language, verbal abuse and physical abuse modeled, with unrealistic outcomes, is astonishing," DuRant said. "For example, during one wrestling match a man dangled a woman upside down and then dropped her on her head, knocking her unconscious. In reality, I know this act would have broken her neck and probably would have killed her.
Okay, let's assume that they're talking about the Dudley's table spot, which it certainly sounds like. Putting aside the tabloidish manner in which they described it (dangling a woman upside down and dropping her on her head?), couldn't the same result happen with a man?
I'd assumed that they were referring to back when Kane tombstoned Tori after leaving him for X-pac. Fuck, I'd tombstone anyone who found X-pac appealing, but aside from that, watching wrestling did not affect my youth. Its one thing to correlate it with children's behavior(which is still iffy), but I think they're quite underestimating the adolescent mind. Teenagers are pretty immature but I just can't picture some 16 year-old behaving based on what he watched on television. What about violent kids who don't watch wrestling? Why aren't movies anymore to blame?
Originally posted by darkmatcher... What about violent kids who don't watch wrestling?
They would be the ones playing video games
Its always been this way. I remember about 8-10 years ago, kids would tell their parents that they are going to play "Power Rangers" or "Ninja Turtles" which involved a heap of kids getting together and belting shit out of each other.
Kids my age used to play the vietnam war - complete with racist comments (which I won't relate here)
Right back to the days of playing cowboys and itchybums. Kids (alright - boys) have always played re-enacting violent behaviour. It all comes back to the same argument. Parents need to monitor their kids behaviour and take action themselves if it becomes worrisome. Not ban wrestling because kids fight.
/rant
Warrior Quote: "Presuming initial consensualness, where exactly do we draw the lines of our judgment pinning down the responsibility and accountability inextricably attached to each human life? "
Courtesy of the Observer: Knoble/London looks like an awesome match. However, I don't see the point in Nunzio jobbing to Orlando Jordan, seeing as Nunzio will be in the Cruiser match at WM. And the FBI winning is always a plus.