How television commentary affects judgment on a sports match.

The first hypothesis of this study is based on Bandura's theory and the aforementioned research showing that (a) children's perception of televised violence is influenced by commentary from adults, and (b) adult's perceptions and enjoyment of sports contests is affected by sports commentators.

Hypothesis: People are most critical of a player's behavior if the commentator disapproves the behavior, less critical if the behavior is neutrally described, and least critical if the behavior receives approving commentary.

Hypothesis 2: People's sensitivity to commentary effects does not depend on their viewing experience.

At the end of looking at all of the surveys conducted at the end of this experiment we realized that commentary on a sporting event, whether it be something as boring as golf or something as hyped up and fake as WWF, does have an affect on how we interpret the even on television. Therefore children watching sporting events on television are exposed to many different types of fallacies. This is not as noticeable or threatening, for that matter, because these are sporting events and are not viewed as persuasive or harmful in any way. The announcers have a way of manipulating the views and opinion of the viewer without being as obvious as something such as a political campaign, but is still a prevalent occurrence in the world of televised sports. Something such as ESPN where they, for the most part, just tell what is going on, is appropriate, but younger children should avoid something very negative and persuasive as WWF.

The golf match contained very neutral commentary that did not favor or discouraged but merely described what was occurring in the match. The match was mainly focused on the golf mogul, Tiger Woods. When people were asked their current view on Tiger Woods and golf, most responded in the same way. They pretty much felt that the hype of Tiger and golf was slowing down. Since the commentary was primarily neutral, when asked the question; do you feel the commentators' remarks affect you view of Tiger Woods and golf?: most answered no.

sists of nine 1minute videotaped excerpts from professional sports matches. Each excerpt shows a similar aggressive foul. In all cases, a player of one team (the offender) brought down a player of the other team (the victim) and in all cases the official punished the foul. The excerpts started with a small part of the match preceding the foul.

This study applies with our class because it can be associated with Causal Fallacies (post-hoc). This is the assumption that one event is caused by another without sufficient evidence that the two are connected. At some points when the commentary is attacking the one player of a team the Attacking the Person (ad hominem) fallacy could be applied.

Some common words found in the essay are:
Ad Hominem, Involved Study, Validity Results, Tiger Woods, Attacking Person, Research Question, Results Samples, Tiger WWF, Hypothesis People, Commentary Type, player team, ad hominem, commentators' remarks affect, comments affect, version commentator, remarks affect, attacking person, commentators' remarks, affect view, commentators' comments, remarks affect view, commentators' comments affect, negative commentary, view tiger woods, tiger woods golf,
Approximate Word count = 1518
Approximate Pages = 6 (250 words per page double spaced)