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The Scientific Reason Intelligent People Love Trashy Reality TV
By Emily Madriga
An article in Psychology Today highlights why so many of my smart, successful friends share the same guilty pleasure of loving juicy, dramatic, trashy reality TV. They found that those with “intellectual interests” were drawn to reality TV as entertainment with the same frequency as normal people — it seems that shows like The Bachelor, The Real Housewives, and MTV’s The Challenge speak to the human condition in a way that crosses IQ lines.
Why?
Psychology Today posits a few reasons:
[*] Seeing the lifestyles of extremely rich or famous (or just very emotionally immature and dramatic) people is foreign to our own lives, so it serves as the perfect escape where we can watch something without our minds being drawn back to familiar stressors.
[*] The cast members take risks we are unwilling to take in our own lives. Getting drunk and made bad, potentially life-altering, decisions is something most people grow out of by their mid-20’s. The idea of seeing people act against their own interests and do things like have bathroom sex with a random person is kind of thrilling to think about, but something that for most of us, is a lot more fun (and safer) to watch than do.
