Technology and Roles: A Tale of Two TVs
Clifford Nass, Byron Reeves, and Glenn Leshner
Abstract
Effects of television, as most commonly studied by social scientists, are usually based on what is shown on the screen. But television is also a physical object, often dedicated to a particular location and to particular functions. This study examines whether or not differences in ascribed characteristics of television sets change responses to television content, especially when a particular set is dedicated to specific program content. Subjects who watched news segments on one TV and entertainment segments on another identical TV (specialist TVs) rated the news higher on news attributes and the entertainment higher on entertainment attributes than subjects who watched the same news and entertainment segments on one TV (generalist TV). Furthermore, subjects who watched the specialist TVs rated the news and entertainment segments as higher in quality and liked the segments more than subjects who watched the generalist TV. These results, consistent with previous results for perceptions of humans, suggest that when television sets are dedicated to a particular function or role, individuals' judgments and evaluations of what they watch can be changed in accordance with that dedication.
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