ferson. indirid. Lhfl Vol. IO. No. 9, pp. 1003-1006. 1989 Printed in Great Britain. All rights reserved 0191~8869,‘89 53.043 + 0.00 Copyright :G 1989 Maxwell Pergamon Macmillan plc Television viewing and sensation seeking: uses, preferences and attitudes G. ROWLASD, G. Fours and T. HEATHERTON Department of Psychology. The University of Calgary, Calgary, Alberta, Canada T2N IN4 (Received 14 October 1988) Summary-In Study I, 251 university students responded to the Television Usages and Attitude questionnaire and to Zuckennan’s (Sensation Seeking: Beyond the Optimal Level of Arousal, 1979) Sensation Seeking Scale (Form V). High sensation seekers reported that they utilized television to enhance stimulus intensity and complexity by watching television in conjunction with other activities and expressed liberal moral/political attitudes toward the medium. Low sensation seekers reported that they watched television in situations in which there were few distractions and expressed conservative moral/political attitudes toward the medium. Low sensation seeking males reported regular viewing patterns in contrast to high sensation seekers, who eschewed habitual patterns of viewing. Low sensation seeking females expressed a preference toward passively watching events on television as opposed to actively participating in the event. Program content preference was not related to sensation seeking. In Study II, 252 university students completed the Sensation Seeking Scale (Form V) and a detailed questionnaire about their daily television viewing. As in Study I, program content preference was not related to sensation seeking. However, males watched more television per week than females, with high sensation seeking males watching less television than the low and medium groups. The high and low sensation seeking females watched less television than did the medium female group. Males preferred to watch sporting events and situation comedies, with females preferring to watch soap operas. Zuckerman (1979) defines sensation seeking as “... the need for varied, novel and complex sensations and experiences and the willingness to take physical and social risks for the sake of such experiences”. Preferences for emotionally salient visual stimuli have been found to be related to sensation seeking. Zuckerman and Litle (1986) have demonstrated that attendance at horror and X-rated erotic movies is positively related to sensation seeking. Schierman and Rowland (1985) have demonstrated that the viewing (on closed circuit television) of action oriented movies and the frequency of channel changing are positively related to sensation seeking. Political/moral values and attitudes are negatively related to sensation seeking (Levin and Schalmo, 1974; Kish, Netterberg and Leahy, 1973) as is authoritarianism (Kish and Donnerwerth, 1972). Assuming that the daily viewing of television is a major source of information, vicarious new experience and overt sensory stimulation for the majority of individuals, it would seem likely that the trait of sensation seeking would play an important role in individual use of this medium. Viewing patterns, program content preferences and political/moral attitudes and values expressed about the medium should be congruent with individual styles of sensation seeking. STUDY I: PREFERENCES, ATTITUDES, USES AND PRIORITIES This study was designed to assess the relationships between sensation seeking and television program content preferences, television viewing while engaging in other activities and attitudes toward television. Four specific predictions were made: (a) high sensation seekers would prefer those types of programs which present the most varied, novel and/or arousing contents, e.g. crime, sports; (b) high sensation seekers would watch television while engaging in other activities, e.g. reading, thus enhancing the intensity, novelty and complexity of the situation; (c) low sensation seekers would express conservative political and moral attitudes toward television programs, e.g. condone censorship of programs; and (d) high sensation seekers would assign television viewing a low priority, i.e. express a preference for participating in actual events as opposed to viewing them vicariously on television. METHOD Two hundred and fifty-one university undergraduate students, 77 males (mean age = 22.4 yr) and 174 females (mean age = 24.0 yr) voluntarily completed the Television Usage and Attitudes questionnaire (TVUA) and Zuckerman’s (1979) Sensation Seeking Scale, Form V, (SSS). They also listed their five favorite regularly scheduled (i.e. weekly) television programs (e.g. ‘MASH’, ‘Cheers’) and their five favorite special television programs (e.g. ‘Superbowl’, ‘Academy Awards’). The TVUA was designed to assess the four predictions and contained 63 items, a sample of which is presented in Table I. Items 1-62 (worded in the first person and responded to as ‘true’ or ‘false’) were scored ‘1’ for the predicted response of a high sensation seeker and ‘0’ for the predicted response of a low sensation seeker. Item 63, (“If TV programs were classified like movies, I would primarily watch programs which were classified as ....“) was scored, General = 1, Parental Guidance = 2, Mature = 3, Restricted = 4, X-Rated = 5. The test-retest reliability of total scores on this instrument, over a 4 week interval, was 0.85 (n = 20). 1003