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corrupts our youth
Study: Leads to tobacco-chewing and other stuff
By David Everitt
Denunciations of TV wrestling are nothing new. Actually, the only people likely to come right out and defend Vince McMahon are unabashed ratings-worshippers and excitable 14-year-old boys.
Recently, though, we’ve seen something a bit different.
Complaints so far have primarily been based on matters of taste and fairly vague assertions that the WWF is causing widespread social decay.
Now, there’s some scientific data to back up the anti-rasslin’ attacks.
Or, at least, a social scientist’s idea of scientific data.
At the end of April researchers at the Wake Forest University School of Medicine presented results of a study that investigated the effects of TV-wrestling consumption on high school students.
The study establishes a link between frequent wrestling viewing and various forms of violent acts and drug abuse.
The study connects wrestling programs with such things as fighting, carrying a gun, roughing up a girlfriend/boyfriend, drunken driving and chewing tobacco.
In other words, what I would call the acts of a sniveling, low-life punk hoodlum. The study prefers the term "health risk behaviors." Which you really can’t argue with.
Punching somebody in the face definitely poses a risk to the health of at least one person involved.
As a bit of a surprise, the study finds that the relationship between wrestling shows and this kind of behavior is especially strong among females.
Oh, and one other thing. Watching the WWF is also linked to taking Ritalin without a prescription.
Apparently, there’s something about watching Stone Cold Steve Austin pile-driving some guy into the canvas that produces an irresistible urge to take an anti-attention-deficit-disorder medication.
Usually we hear about wrestling encouraging violence, bad language and ugly anti-female attitudes. But non-prescription drug use? And tobacco-chewing?
The explanation for this unique element in the Wake Forest study seems to lie in the way the research originally developed.
As it turns out, the study began as a random drug-testing program. Dr. Robert DuRant, professor and vice chairperson of Wake Forest’s department of pediatrics, was asked to evaluate the drug-testing data. He agreed, but only on the condition that he be allowed to attach the wrestling issue to the research.
"It was a matter of saying, if I do this for you, then let me do what I want to do," says DuRant, author of the Wake Forest wrestling study.
In the fall of 1999, Dr. DuRant and his team surveyed a random sampling of 2,228 North Carolina high school students. In the spring of 2000, they followed up with another survey of the same group.
What all this means is that this is a longitudinal study. This, in turn, means that the study establishes a correlation between wrestling-viewing and certain types of behavior. That’s not the same thing as establishing a cause-and-effect relationship.
Accepting the results of the study for the moment, you can very easily come to the alternate conclusion that violent kids tend to like watching violent shows like wrestling.
Something tells me that these kids who’re going around toting guns and punching their dates were never exactly honor-roll students.
Of course they watch wrestling. What’d you expect they’d be doing with their spare time? Reading the collected works of Jane Austen?
Anyway, that’s the way it seems to me. But I ask Dr. DuRant if it’s true that this study establishes a correlation, not a cause-and-effect.
"True," he answers. "However, when you look at wrestling viewing at one point in time and then follow up later, you come closer to causation."
Okay. Now let me see if I have this right. One correlation plus another correlation equals cause-and-effect. I’m not sure I’m familiar with this form of addition.
Robert Thompson, head of Syracuse University’s Center for the Study of Popular Televsion, has another way of looking at the value of correlations.
"You can find correlations between all sorts of things," he says. "There is an absolute correlation, for instance, between the size of my salary and the thinning of my hair. But does that mean anything?"
I ask Dr. DuRant to elaborate on why he thinks his study establishes that TV wrestling causes various forms of antisocial behavior.
"Years of research all point in the same direction," he says. "We know from a whole wealth of scientific TV literature that if you expose children and adolescents to TV violence, as is found on wrestling programs, these studies point to a cause-and-effect."
The wealth of literature he’s referring to is the hundred-odd studies conducted by other social scientists.
The problem is this research consists of other studies dealing solely in correlations--and often not even strong correlations--as well as various laboratory experiments that are seriously flawed.
Which brings to mind a larger point: If the link between media violence and real violence was so obvious, and the research so compelling, why has it been necessary to conduct a hundred studies to prove the point? Wouldn’t four or five have been sufficient?
"It never occurs to these social scientists," says Thompson, "that maybe, rather than conducting a 99th or 100th study, maybe the time has come to adjust the hypothesis."
There may be all sorts of other reasons to object to the vulgarities and over-the-top violence of wrestling, but so-called scientific evidence would not be one of them.
There also may be some other angles here that moral crusaders and researchers haven’t taken into account.
Thompson tells a story about appearing on a call-in radio show to discuss the wrestling controversy.
"One call came in where this man says to me, ‘I take great issue with what you’ve been saying about wrestling not being a pervasive negative influence. I absolutely know for a fact that wrestling causes kids to be violent. Every time my son watches the WWF, all he wants to do is wrestle on the floor with me.’
"And I said, ‘Isn’t that a good thing? Isn’t that what fathers are supposed to do with their sons?’"
Just imagine. A father might put aside his laptop long enough to interact physically with his child. Obviously something needs to be done about that.
May 22, 2001 © 2001 Media Life
-David Everitt covers technology for Media Life, writing from Huntington, New York.
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