
                         Roanoke Times
                 Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.

DATE: MONDAY, April 30, 1990                   TAG: 9004300258
SECTION: NATIONAL/INTERNATIONAL                    PAGE: A/1   EDITION: EVENING 
SOURCE: Associated Press
DATELINE: LOS ANGELES                                LENGTH: Short

STUDY SAYS TV LEAVES VIEWERS BORED, HOSTILE

Watching television takes less concentration than eating and leaves many viewers feeling worse than before they sat down in front of the set, according to a 13-year study.

The study found the longer a person watched the set, the more drowsy, bored, sadder, lonelier and hostile the viewer became, said psychologists Robert Kubey of Rutgers University and Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi of the University of Chicago.

Their book, "Television and the Quality of Life: How Viewing Shapes Everyday Experience," is scheduled to be released today.

The study is the latest of thousands of publications that have attempted to evaluate the effects of television. But this project is seen as one of the most inclusive analysis on the effects of television, said Howard Gardner, a psychologist at Harvard University.

To assess viewing patterns and the impact they have on people's moods, Csikszentmihalyi and Kubey asked 1,200 people, ranging from the age of 10 to 82, to write down how they felt every time a beeper they were asked to carry went off.

"Basically," Csikszentmihalyi said, "we collected a series of snapshots of what people were doing and how they felt at the time. . . . We were thus able to map moods and patterns of behavior that may have eluded the subjects themselves."

by CNB