Word: behaviorism
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...past four months, there have been four weighty books published on the subject, with titles like Hooked: New Science on How Casual Sex Is Affecting Our Children and So Sexy So Soon. Most of these treatises have a similar thesis: young girls are sexually loose because they're aping behavior they see on TV or read about in magazines. And as if on cue, the media deliver a new 90210 with an oral-sex scene in the first episode; Gossip Girl comes back with billboards promoting it as MIND-BLOWINGLY INAPPROPRIATE ... and your daughter starts singing that alarmingly suggestive song...
Some insight into how media images are processed into behavior comes from a 2004 Harvard study on the arrival of TV in Western Fiji. The most noticeable change was that Fijian women became dissatisfied with their bodies and tried to lose weight. They didn't necessarily want to be like Europeans; they just wanted to look like them. Is it possible that the situation for teens and tweens is the same? They don't want to be like the characters in Gossip Girl (only 16% of whose viewers are actually teen girls) or America's Next Top Model; they just...
Viscusi is a believer that a last-minute conversion to better business behavior can improve your chances for continued employment. The author's manifesto on how to be a winning employee is neatly divided into four major pieces of advice...
...researchers then compared prescribing behavior of French-speaking Quebec residents, who only tune in to American channels five percent of the time, with those living in English-speaking Canada, who are estimated to spend about 30 percent of their time in front of the television watching American shows...
...developing world, which isn't likely to give up its newly acquired taste for cheeseburgers and pork. The same goes for energy use, or travel. It's great for magazines to come up with 51 ways you can save the environment, but relying on individuals to voluntarily change their behavior is nowhere near as effective as political change aimed at speeding the transition to an economy far less carbon-intensive than our current one. So, by all means cut back on the burgers - I recommend a nice deep-fried scorpion - but remember that your choices from the takeout menu will...