Reality T. V's Relationship With Aggression

This semester, as a way to relieve stress, I would come home and watch The Bachelor. This season the bachelor was an older man named Chris Soules who is from a small farming town. As is practiced on The Bachelor there is a large group of girls and over the weeks the bachelor slims the group down until he finds the one he wants to propose to and marry. Reality T.V tends to have a large amount of drama and seemed to be a perfect fit for observing social awareness and irrational aggression within a group. It can be observed that social awareness, the state of being aware of yourself and your opinions, has a correlational relationship with aggression, behavior that hurts someone in one way or another, due to people feeling uncomfortable with themselves …show more content…
This episode is the first time that all the women were back together after watching the season and hearing all the things that had been said. The heightened emotions and feelings of self awareness caused for even more aggression to come to the surface. It is arguable that in certain situations aggression is a self defense mechanism. These women feeling a need to defend themselves ended up participating in more hostile verbal aggression instead of calmly addressing the situation. One example of completely hostile aggression was when a woman named Carlie called another woman named Britt a lier due to her beliefs about Chris’ life style changing throughout the show. It was clear throughout the season that Carlie was jealous of the special connection that Britt and Chris had and therefore said many demeaning things about Britt in her personal interviews. The reason that these statements are referred to as hostile aggression is due to the women being aware of their interviews being broadcast. Though Carlie knew that Britt would one day see her interviews and be hurt she continued to be verbally abusive and reticule her with hand puppets. Another key example of aggression also occurred at this meeting, however, this aggression could be labeled as instrumental aggression. One of Britt’s friends from the season came to her defense against Carlie and called Carlie rude, manipulative, and disrespectful among with other choice words. Though these words were vindictive and were meant to bring attention to Carlie’s flaws it can be argued that this aggression was instrumental because the desired outcome was to defend Britt and help others to see her in a positive