By all means, consume! A multi-method investigation of the relationship between television, consumerism, and criminal behavior

The dissertation examines the relationship between consumer messages on television, consumerism, anomie, and criminal behavior among youth in the United States. A multiple method investigation, there are four principal components of the study. The first component involves a content analysis of the twenty-five highest rated prime-time programs each year from 1950 through 1995 and archival research on the quantity and quality of commercial messages over the same period. The second component of the study is a time series analysis that seeks to explain variations in consumerist content and specify the relationship between the content and juvenile arrest rates. The third component of the study is a cross-sectional analysis of national probability samples of high school seniors surveyed annually from 1975 through 1995 by the Monitoring the Future project. The fourth component of the study is a time series analysis relating aggregated data from the annual cross-sections of high school seniors and the annual consumerism scores derived from the content analysis. Three assumptions and three main hypotheses were investigated. The first assumption was that television is filled with consumerist messages. The second assumption was that the degree to which television is filled with consumerist messages varies over time. The third assumption was that most children will not avoid exposure to consumerist messages. The first hypothesis was that television viewing leads to consumerism (consumer attitudes and behaviors) that persists as long as the child viewer can successfully enact the consumer role through adequate means of consumption. The second hypothesis was that among youths with a desire to consume that exceeds their means of consumption (referred to as low outcome or efficacy expectancy), consumerism leads to anomie and/or frustration. The third and final hypothesis was that anomie and/or frustration leads to criminal behavior. All three assumptions received some support. Archival research showed that television is filled with the most basic of consumerist messages, commercials. The content analysis demonstrated that the consumerist messages of television did vary over time. A review of prior empirical work indicated that children most cannot avoid exposure to them. The hypotheses also received some support. At the individual level, consumerist television was shown to be related to concurrent consumer behavior (days spent shopping) and consumer attitudes (desire to earn lots of money). Both consumer attitudes and behaviors were shown to be related to concurrent levels of anomie, and anomie was shown to be related to criminal behavior. In the cross-sectional analysis, these relationships were not contingent upon socioeconomic status nor perceived efficacy. The relationships were quite small and issues of causal order were not resolvable. The dynamic cross-sectional analysis revealed that at the aggregate level, lagged values of consumerist television were positively and quite substantively related to consumer behaviors and acts of innovation and rebellion among certain subgroups, particularly males and females with low perceived efficacy. The relationship between televised consumerism and both anomie and retreatism were consistently negative. Alternative explanations for these findings are presented