Does Watching Reality TV Make You a Creep, or Are You Like Everyone Else?

A look into how voyeurism resembles our reality TV watching habits

By Ellie Roth

Reality TV—the genre of television we all love to hate, yet it has us glued to our television screens nearly every night. It’s currently “The Bachelorette” that is controlling your college student airwaves. If you walk past any apartment building in Dinkytown around 7 p.m. on a Tuesday night, you can see the TV screens all with the same image—men in suits, women in sparkly dresses, botox, faux sets, and orange-y reality TV lighting. The same story retold every year is attracting more and more sets of eyes and revenue. Why is it that we can’t get enough of these cheesy, unrealistic, and staged stories? What keeps us glued to our TV screens?


A study by Turkish psychologist Lemi Baruh exemplifies how our gravitation towards reality TV can be understood in the context of voyeurism. Voyeurism is defined broadly as a disorder that causes a person to gain pleasure from watching unsuspecting individuals. Sounds creepy, right? Baruh’s study revealed that voyeuristic tendencies are strongly correlated with the consumption of reality TV. Participants were asked to rate whether or not they agree with the following statements (from 1 for strongly disagree to 7 for strongly agree):

  1. I enjoy watching television programs that help me get a peek into people’s private moments

  2. I like television programs that show a side of people that I would not normally see

  3. I enjoy watching television programs that provide access to things that people try and hide


When combined, the average total for all three of these statements was 10 points, with the highest individual score for statement 2. In the cases of television, people may have voyeuristic tendencies because they enjoy any chance to see what they would otherwise be unable to see when the curtains are left open on others’ lives. Reality TV is the backstage pass. We can imagine what we would do in outlandish situations (“The Bachelor” or “Survivor”) or how we would live if we were famous (“Keeping Up with the Kardashians”). 


As humans, we love the chance to escape into another person’s life. We like to watch. To observe. We make up little stories about the people sitting next to us on the train or walking past us in the park. Reality TV allows us to pretend to be someone else for just a moment. Maybe that’s why it’s so popular, especially right now. In the context of our confusing and sometimes scary world, we all would love the chance to be someone else, even if it’s just for a two hour primetime slot on ABC. 



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