Effects of Personality Types on the Use of Television Genre

Abstract

This study examined the role of three personality characteristics, Psychoticism, Extraversion, and Neuroticism (PEN), on viewers' level of attention to five different genres of television programming: news, soap operas, reality shows, talk shows, and crime dramas. A survey of 381 college students showed psychoticism to be negatively related to attention to news and reality show programming. There was a positive relationship between extraversion and attention to reality programming. Finally, neuroticism was positively associated with attention to all genres assessed. The implications of these findings for future research are discussed.

Notes

** p < .01

* p < .05.

***p < .001

*p < .05

+ p < .1.

¹The dichotomous measure of psychoticism has shown a relatively low reliability. For example, with university student samples of England, Canada, the United States, and Australia, Francis, Brown, and Philipchalk (1992) demonstrated low reliabilities of psychoticism: the U.S. sample (α = 0.31), the Canadian sample (α = 0.41), and the English sample (α = 0.51). In a recent study by Francis, Lewis, and Ziebertz (2006) with a German student sample, the reliability coefficient of psychoticism was 0.42.