Psychologists view on people who watch wrestling

Vince135792003

Just an article I found in an Irish newspaper from about 2 years ago by the head of psychology at a hospital in Dublin and their view about people/kids who get into watching wrestling:



WWF also appeals to the child who is a loner, who is distressed or has poor self-esteem.

"The child who feels inadequate identifies with the wrestlers and gets a vicarious sense of power or revenge. A child who has been bullied is seeing wrestlers doing what the child would subconsciously like to do," she says.

Children who experience or who witness violence are also prone to watching WWF because they are torn between hating violence and trying to understand it, she adds.

"A lot of kids will self-select out of watching WWF. It's the needy and the vulnerable who tend to watch it," she says.

"Parents have to make their own decisions about letting their children watch WWF. They have to ask what value it has in their children's lives," she advises.

The most difficult question for parents may be this: is your child viewing WWF as a way of covering up problems?

"My view is that WWF is not good for children. Parents need to ask: `Why is my child watching this?' " Murray advises.

Not all kids are into violence. US media research has shown that young people are more interested in Sabrina The Teenage Witch than they are in WWF Smackdown. And while 80 per cent of PlayStation and Nintendo games are violent, the most popular game - Frogger - involves helping a frog to cross the road.

Parents may be doing their children a disservice by believing that there is an acceptable level of violence to which children will inevitably be exposed. We do have choices. WWF may harm your child. Not watching WWF won't do any harm at all.



Theres lots lots more but does she have a point?

Mr.Nice Guy

Well I can't really speak on this seeing as I got into watching wrestling regularly when I was around 12 but I do think the article is flawed.

I think kids watch wrestling for the same reason they watch Superhero shows, it's a chance to see larger-than-life characters fighting the bad guys. I don't think there's anything wrong in that.

Faces like Hulk Hogan, Sting, Bret Hart and later on The Rock gave kids someone to look up to so I wouldn't say watching wrestling is a symptom of social problems.

With that being said, if I had a child I'd be reluctant to let him/her watch what's on wrestling these days.

Mossy Monk

is it all about children? theres a flaw is they are talking about people who watch wrestling

jonnybadd

I think the report is also very flawed. As Mr Nice Guy said the faces give the kids something to look up to. How many times have you seen a kid a big fan of a heel?

Also you say this report is two years old, then how is Frogger the most popular game then? The game is almost as old as myself.

RotalicaV

im a wanker

muffler

RotalicaV wrote:

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Granny:D

Mr.Nice Guy

RotalicaV wrote:

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Guy?

I agree. Only real men watch wrestling!:D

dlofnep

I like how pyschologists spend all their time analyising other people's lifes and are too sad to actually do something more constructive with their own lifes.

muffler

RotalicaV wrote:

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Grumpy:D

Vince135792003

I thought I might aswell post the whole article. Just to clear things up the article is from the Irish Times and it is 4 years old not 2 written in 2001. Just to clarify it was maybe my fault when I added people and not children who watch wrestling to the front of the thread. I still think its comparable though for people who watched wrestling as a kid who are now mature, sophisticated adults! I'd disagree with alot of what she says but anyway it was an interesting read so here it is:


A dangerous spiral: when violence breeds violence
By KATHRYN HOLMQUIST

By its very nature, WWF appeals particularly to children who need violence in order to feel emotionally aroused. It hooks them with a level of violence until they get bored, then increases the levels of violence to entice them in again. Like addicts needing higher and higher doses of drugs, the children seek out increasingly sadistic images.

Father Paul Andrews, SJ, a psychologist, meets a lot of WWF fans amongst the children he works with. Wrestling, he observes, has a particular appeal to kids who need "a lot of buzz". These are kids who have an almost physical craving for excitement and stimulation. "The threshold gets higher and higher and it changes people," says Andrews.

"There is a massive consensus that the viewing of violence by children results in a violent and abusive nature."

Psychological research has shown that seeing violence on TV makes some children less sensitive to the pain and suffering of others. Others may become more fearful of the world around them. It has been proven that children who watch a lot of violent TV are more likely to behave in aggressive or harmful ways towards others.

"Children who have grown up on violent TV need new and increasingly shocking images. While they may know intellectually that the images are fake, viscerally the children do not know it is fake. That is the difficulty," says Marie Murray, head of psychology at St Vincent's Hospital, Fairview, Dublin.

"Children know it's fantasy, but they are still addicted to it because of the responses it evokes," she says.

WWF also appeals to the child who is a loner, who is distressed or has poor self-esteem.

"The child who feels inadequate identifies with the wrestlers and gets a vicarious sense of power or revenge. A child who has been bullied is seeing wrestlers doing what the child would subconsciously like to do," she says.

Children who experience or who witness violence are also prone to watching WWF because they are torn between hating violence and trying to understand it, she adds.

"A lot of kids will self-select out of watching WWF. It's the needy and the vulnerable who tend to watch it," she says.

"Parents have to make their own decisions about letting their children watch WWF. They have to ask what value it has in their children's lives," she advises.

The most difficult question for parents may be this: is your child viewing WWF as a way of covering up problems?

"My view is that WWF is not good for children. Parents need to ask: `Why is my child watching this?' " Murray advises.

Not all kids are into violence. US media research has shown that young people are more interested in Sabrina The Teenage Witch than they are in WWF Smackdown. And while 80 per cent of PlayStation and Nintendo games are violent, the most popular game - Frogger - involves helping a frog to cross the road.

Parents may be doing their children a disservice by believing that there is an acceptable level of violence to which children will inevitably be exposed. We do have choices. WWF may harm your child. Not watching WWF won't do any harm at all.

DoctorEdgeWild

Frogger!:rolleyes: Thats some good research right there!

These articles out of nowhere appear every so often and are forgotten about just as quickly.

They have to ask what value it has in their children's lives

Entertainment - that is the value. Does watching a yellow sponge who is somehow alive give a child a distorted view of the world? Perhaps regular viewing of a purple dinosaur will sadden children in life when they hear that dinosaurs have been extinct for many years.:eek:

Over analysing everything a kid does or watches is the reason people are such idiots these days. Unable to deal with life, preferring to pay thousands of bucks for therapy, getting married about 10 or 20 times or suing the government when they trip on the street. Its all more obvious in the US but its creeping in here.

Kids watch wrestling becuase they get to see guys beating up each other and funny stuff happening. Simple as that. The fireworks, the hot girls, the loud noises, it all appeals to a kid's sense of entertainment.

Some people grow out of it, some people don't. Watching and becoming interested in a physical feat of athletiscism is surely better than feeding your child McDonalds and parking him in front of the Playstation?

Firewalkwithme

DoctorEdgeWild wrote:

Watching and becoming interested in a physical feat of athletiscism is surely better than feeding your child McDonalds and parking him in front of the Playstation?

Not if your child is playing Frogger, according to psychologists

I agree with what you're saying though DoctorEdgeWild, the problem as I see it is that there will always be a huge audience of fretful parents just waiting to lap this kind of rubbish up. Whether it's violence on tv, video games, junk food or whatever happens to be the flavour of the month. Any of these things can be interpreted as being detrimental to the healthy development of a child. My own personal feeling is that kids should be exposed to these things as a natural part of growing up and learning about the world. The more information they have about any subject, the easier it is for them to draw their own conclusions.

jonnybadd wrote:

How many times have you seen a kid a big fan of a heel?

I was always a fan of heels as a kid and still am to this day. Why? Because the faces almost always have to be, well pussys to be honest. It's more fun to cheer for the bad guy anyway because they get to do all the cool stuff. I wonder what a psychologist would have to say about that? Most fans are like sheep and will only cheer who they are told to - even when it contradicts their supposed morals. For example, look at Stone Cold or even Eddie Guerrero as faces. Austin because the ultimate anti-hero and Eddie's motto is Lie, Cheat and Steal. They do the same or worse than some of the heels do yet the fans just cheer because they are simply programmed to at this stage.

gimmick

^^^

that there will always be a huge audience of fretful parents just waiting to lap this kind of rubbish up. Whether it's violence on tv, video games, junk food or whatever happens to be the flavour of the month

True, and the psychologists say it fúcks kids minds. Whats these people should realise is that a child will only make something like this as dangerous as whats he is lead to believe it is. If the child sees this on telly, it doesnt automatically means he will try to be a heel in school, same way as a child wont trya nd live underwater after watching spongebob etc.

Now parents do have to stand in and tell the kids that these are trained professionals, and not to try it until they are old enough to recieve proper training.

These psychologists are better served with doing something useful rather than publishing this godawful claptrap which only serves to be scare mongering rather than anything else. One last point, what if a slightly underconfident 11 year old wrestling reads this rubbish - is this going to end up giving him a complex, or will it turn him off wrestling. Somehow id go for the former.

RotalicaV wrote:

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Though id love to hear what a psychologist would have to say about this idiot. It must take a special mind to go onto a wrestling board, and make such an awesome impactful statment as that.

DoctorEdgeWild

Suffice to say, Frogger and wrestling made me who I am today.:D

Ham'nd'egger

Gentlemen

Before we diss the comments in the report point blank, we should bear in mind one major fact. Dr. Murray works almost exclusively with "problem children" and as such, all of her reports (And I have met her and heard her speak) are geared towards anti social behaviorisms etc in these "problem children" and things that affect them. This is something that she is infinitely more trained at than we are so it is not as if she is clueless as to her findings; this would have been very well researched insofar as she would have observed the kids over time. Even if she doesn't know who is who.

Let's be realistic here, if these kids got hurt either physically or mentally playing rugby, she would figure that it hurts the kids in many ways. And rightly so. So does jumping in front of the Dublin Cork Express. It's just a case of the blind leading the blind and interesting as it is, it is written about a small and flawed portion of youth today. I have watched wrestling since I was maybe 7 or 8 and while we all had our "Do what we saw on telly" phase, I am sure we would have flown X Wing fighters or used Light Sabers if such things were easily attained for 5 minutes and moved on; sadly some members of society are not tooled to do this as we are. The whole showmanship of wrestling is to make it look as real as possible, it is not our faults if someone wants to act rashly from it.

Still, a good read nonetheless and it has us all thinking a little.

Fozzy

"Parents have to make their own decisions about letting their children watch WWF" - I was getting a different idea when I read the article, sentences like that made it sound like the kids should be watching more decent wrestling, like ROH or New Japan!

But to be honest, if it's not wrestling, it's something else that will "make" kids violent or antisocial. If I was kept away from all these things as a kid, I'd be a bit more ****ed up in the head now