Androgyny and the Perception of Television Violence as Perpetrated by Males and Females

Abstract

This study examined British viewers' perceptual judgments of violent TV scenes from three categories of programming: British crime detective series, American crime detective series, and science fiction series in which either a male assailant attacked a female victim or a female assailant attacked a male victim. Violence took the form either of a shooting or a fist fight/physical struggle which were balanced equally across male and female violence. Each scene was rated by a panel of viewers for the perceived seriousness of its content along eight evaluative scales. Respondents also filled out the Bem (1974) Sex Role Inventory (BSRI). Results showed that male violence on a female victim was rated as more serious than female violence on a male victim, but only in a contemporary British crime drama context. In contemporary American crime or futuristic, science fiction contexts, the reverse was true. High masculinity scores on the BSRI were associated with the belief that male victimization by a female assailant was more violent and disturbing than female victimization by a male assailant, while high femininity scorers found female victimization the more violent and disturbing of the two. These relationships held following separate analysis for male respondents and female respondents and indicate the importance of self-perceived masculinity-femininity as well as actual sex as mediators of viewers' judgments about TV violence.