xpost (psychology): How Television Can Make You Believe Things That Aren't True

kanuk876 · 2011-10-19T05:30:23+00:00

Think about some of the Law & Order series, as just one example from innumerable.

SpanishGuy · 2011-10-19T09:49:48+00:00

Read this and freak out (it's Paul Bloom, from Yale):

This is Robert Young. Does anybody know the part he plays? He played an — He played a doctor called Marcus Welby in this famous show "Marcus Welby, M.D.," and Marcus Welby was a wonderful doctor. He was compassionate and kind, he made house calls, he saved lives, he counseled people, and it turned out that Robert Young was then deluged with mail, thousands of pieces of mail, by people asking for his advice on health matters. [laughter] And he then, in a twist, exploited the fundamental attribution error — people confusing the actor for the role — exploited this by going on TV and espousing the benefits of Sanka decaffeinated coffee where he produced the famous line "I am not a doctor but I play one on TV," [laughter] whereupon people heard this and said, "Well, he must have some authority then about medical matters." [laughter]

It turns out that the confusion between actors and their roles is extremely common. Many people, for instance, view Sylvester Stallone as either an actual hero during the Vietnam War or sort of a hero during the Vietnam War given all his Rambo stuff but in fact, of course, he played — he was in a Swiss boarding school teaching girls age twelve through fifteen during the Vietnam War. But it doesn't seem that way because the role infects how we think about the person. When this movie came out twenty years ago they needed a character to play a gay man. According to IMDb, [The International Movie Database] where I get all my information, they hit up all the big stars, Harrison Ford, Michael Douglas, and Richard Gere, and they all turned it down because they didn't want to play a gay man because people would think that they were gay. Finally, they got Harry Hamlin to do it, who was kind of a B-list sort of guy.

The biggest extreme of the fundamental attribution error, confusing the actor for his role, is Leonard Nimoy who, because he played the emotionless Vulcan, Spock, on Star Trek, was then repeatedly viewed by people who saw him on the street as if he was an actual Vulcan. [laughter] He got sufficiently upset about this to write a book called I Am Not Spock where he described all the ways in which he was not a Vulcan. [laughter] His career, where he attempted many times to play roles that were different from his Vulcan nature, stalled until finally many years later he gave up and wrote another book called I Am Spock [laughter] where he finally conceded to the fundamental attribution error. [laughter]

It's an extreme form of fundamental attribution error. Maybe you don't view Leonard Nimoy as a Vulcan, but you will assume some things as true just because of your cognitive biases.

Edit: Format

Title	xpost (psychology): How Television Can Make You Believe Things That Aren't True
Author	kanuk876
Upvotes	2
Comments	3
Date	October 19, 2011 5:29 AM UTC (14 years ago)
Subreddit	Posted in /r/MensRights
Original Link	https://old.reddit.com/r/MensRights/comments/lh70q/xpost_psychology_how_television_can_make_you/
Archive Link	https://theredarchive.com/r/MensRights/xpost-psychology-how-television-can-make-you.1032909 https://theredarchive.com/post/1032909

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