HOW REAL IS THE PORTRAYAL OF AGGRESSION IN TELEVISION ENTERTAINMENT PROGRAMMING

How realistic is the portrayal of aggressive behavior in entertainment programming on television? An answer to this question is operationali zed in terms of (1) replicated reality and (2) contextualized reality. Replicated reality is assessed by comparing the characteristics of te levised portrayals to real world characteristics, such as the demograp hics of the perpetrators and victims. The contextual reality is an inf erence built from the variables of intention, motivation, reward, cons equences, humor, and realism of the portrayal. The data base for the a nalysis contains 3,844 acts of aggression found in a composite week of 100.5 hours of entertainment programming. The results present evidenc e for replicated reality on the patterns of seriousness of the aggress ion, as well as gender patterns of perpetrators and victims. However, portrayals oi race and age were not found to be close to real world pa tterns of aggression. As for contextual reality the findings did not s upport a morality play template. Bur interesting differences were foun d among the contextual variables across degrees of realism.