Yes, TV Can Make You A Better Person

You might think your TV watching is a solitary act, but depending on the type of show, you could actually be learning about how to treat other people. 

According to a recent study of about 100 college students, some TV shows help viewers to become kinder and more generous toward people who are different from them — even if the show itself doesn’t directly address diversity. 

“After viewing meaningful entertainment, as opposed to more humorous entertainment, people were more likely to help in general, but also they were more likely to help someone who was different from them,” explained Erica Bailey, a mass communications doctoral student at Penn State and lead author of the study. 

By “meaningful entertainment,” Bailey means TV shows that depict something she calls “moral beauty,” such as acts of charity, generosity and self-sacrifice.

For the study, she divided 106 participants, who were mostly young white college students, into two groups. Both groups saw a clip from the canceled FX show “Rescue Me,” about a firefighter named Tommy and his life in New York. 

The control group watch a funny clip of the firefighters playing pranks on each other, while the intervention group watched a clip in which Tommy struggled with flashbacks to the 9/11 terrorist attacks while going through a divorce.

This is just one part of a 13-minute clip that Bailey showed the intervention group: