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Hey knitters... knit a uterus to be placed on the steps of the Supreme Court somewhere around the Roe vs. Wade anniversary! Apparently if you join ![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-community.gif)
knit4choice you can find out much more about this. How very inspiring odd.
One of the things I want to do more in 2005 is read more about happiness, so I bought a book called The Pursuit of Happiness by Myers that talks about a whole bunch of different happiness studies. It's all fascinating, but this passage about the advent of television especially shocked me. I already knew that feeling envious/dissatisfied was a known negative effect of TV watching, but this?
In thirty-four American cities where television ownership became widespread in 1951, the 1951 larceny theft rate (for crimes such as shoplifting and bicycle stealing) jumped. In thirty-four other cities, where a government freeze delayed the introduction of television until 1955, a similar jump in the theft rate occurred--in 1955. Researcher Karen Hennigan and her colleagues attribute the jumps to resentments aroused when younger, poorer people compared their possessions "with (a) those of wealthy television characters and (b) those portrayed in advertisements."
I did some searching, and found references to the Hennigan paper in a lot of places online (here, for example, where they don't like any of the other findings but admit the larceny jump was real). Couldn't find the paper itself though, to find out how much of a jump there was. Whatever--I wanted to know, but just the fact that it was noticeable surprises me.
By the way, I'm not turning this into an anti-TV post. People are a lot savvier now when dealing with the medium than they were in the early 50's. The learceny jump was the result of unleashing a powerful medium into a community without much training... these days we learn to handle television as we grow up. That doesn't mean that seeing real, wealthy people doesn't make us envious, but I imagine we're a lot less susceptible to ads and to TV shows than the unprepared young adults of the 50s.
I'm way out in front at work right now. I have maybe 30 minutes of work when I get in, and then somebody better find me something to do. Funny... I remember when these situations used to scare me. Now they just make me feel loose and ready--something always turns up, and I always end up being able to handle it.
knit4choice you can find out much more about this. How very One of the things I want to do more in 2005 is read more about happiness, so I bought a book called The Pursuit of Happiness by Myers that talks about a whole bunch of different happiness studies. It's all fascinating, but this passage about the advent of television especially shocked me. I already knew that feeling envious/dissatisfied was a known negative effect of TV watching, but this?
In thirty-four American cities where television ownership became widespread in 1951, the 1951 larceny theft rate (for crimes such as shoplifting and bicycle stealing) jumped. In thirty-four other cities, where a government freeze delayed the introduction of television until 1955, a similar jump in the theft rate occurred--in 1955. Researcher Karen Hennigan and her colleagues attribute the jumps to resentments aroused when younger, poorer people compared their possessions "with (a) those of wealthy television characters and (b) those portrayed in advertisements."
I did some searching, and found references to the Hennigan paper in a lot of places online (here, for example, where they don't like any of the other findings but admit the larceny jump was real). Couldn't find the paper itself though, to find out how much of a jump there was. Whatever--I wanted to know, but just the fact that it was noticeable surprises me.
By the way, I'm not turning this into an anti-TV post. People are a lot savvier now when dealing with the medium than they were in the early 50's. The learceny jump was the result of unleashing a powerful medium into a community without much training... these days we learn to handle television as we grow up. That doesn't mean that seeing real, wealthy people doesn't make us envious, but I imagine we're a lot less susceptible to ads and to TV shows than the unprepared young adults of the 50s.
I'm way out in front at work right now. I have maybe 30 minutes of work when I get in, and then somebody better find me something to do. Funny... I remember when these situations used to scare me. Now they just make me feel loose and ready--something always turns up, and I always end up being able to handle it.
