The main purpose of this study is to make a comparison between some findings in the recent report to the U.S. Surgeon General on "television and social behavior" and ours in Japan. The original paper consists of three parts: correlates of TV violence preference, correlates of antisocial agression, and "uses and gratification". Only the third part, however, will be here summerized. According to Lyle and Hoffman's study with tenth graders, when they feel lonely, about eighty per cent of them tend to listen to music or talk to somebody; when their feelings are hurt or they feel angry, most of them tend to 'go off by self'. It was interesting finding that when they have frustration mentioned above, only about one fifth of them watch TV. These results are similar in part to those obtained from our attitude study by a picture projection technique. We found that loneliness or frustration leads most of children to talk with friends, whereas TV use functions much less for such situations. In addition, we found by another questionaire that tenth grade boys who have difficulties like troubles with homework or grades do not flee into escapist behavior such as watching TV or going to movies, but tend to try to solve these troubles in a realistic way such as 'thinking by self' or talking with friends. Both of these findings show that TV does not primarily function as an escapist medium. Steiner noticed, in his national study about ten years ago that the average adult in the U.S. had an ambivalence in TV use According to Losuito's research findings, Lyle stated, in his overview on "Television in Daily Life," that such embarrassment appears to have faded. In his study with Hoffman, he also explained the similar lack of embarrassment among their sixth and tenth graders. Coversely, our date by a picture projection technique showed half of tenth graders, and one third of fourth graders perceived guilt consciousness for wasting time in TV use. Moreover, it seemed as if TV had no beneficial effects to help children gain useful knowledge and to develop their taste. Lyle and Hoffman said, however, "most of students feel that they do learn something from television at least part of the time". This difference between two countries might occur only as a superficial result which stems from different questionaire techniques.
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