Censorship is the suppression or control of speech and other
forms of public communication (e.g. books, films, TV). It is the suppression of
information in society which has been considered to be dangerous, harmful or
objectionable. Censorship does its advantages as it does protect people from
destructive information. However, the very act of censoring something can be
considered a paradox because while it takes the information out of the general
public eye, research has also found that it causes this information to be
viewed more favourably (a sort of doubled edged sword).
Generally, our
response to censored materials is that we actually want to see it more. This is
known as commodity theory (Brock 1968). It is mainly concerned with the
psychological effect of scarcity. In principle, its claim is that “any
commodity will be valued to the extent that it is unavailable”. In other words,
the less available something is, the more attractive it becomes. This is what
happens when something is censored. Because access to the material is limited,
it becomes more sought out and viewed as more favourable.
One study that looked into this was Zellinger at al’s
(1975) study on the effect of age restrictions on pornographic materials. In
this study, participants were informed that they were taking part in a study
investigating the impressions formed from the blurb (the short summary) written
on the back of a book. The participants were then instructed to read short
statements and quotes which would usually be found on the back of a book and to
answer a post-experimental questionnaire to assess their evaluation of them. This was manipulated by the use of age
restrictions in half of the participant’s summaries. Half of them received a “book
for adults only… restricted to those 21 years and over” while the other half
were not provided with such a statement.
Overall, the pornographic material was viewed as more desirable than the non-pornographic. But this is where it gets interesting; results showed that those subjects in the age restriction
group wanted to read the book more than those who were in the non-age
restriction condition. They also reported that they thought they would like the
book more than those in the non-restriction conditions and found it more
desirable. These results supper the commodity theory prediction as placing
limitations on the accessibility of the group actually did lead to an increase
in value associated with the book. By adding some sort of censorship, even
light censorship such as an age rating we can influence how people view a
material and make it appear more desirable.
Alice Owen
References:
Brock,
T. C. (1968). Implications of commodity theory for value change. In A. G.
Greenwald,
T. C. Brock, & T. M. Ostrom (Eds.), Psychological foundations of attitudes
(pp. 243-
275). New York: Academic Press
Zellinger, D. A., Fromkin, h.
L., Speller, D. E., & Kohn, C. A. (1975). A commodity theory analysis of
the effect of age restricted upon pornographic materials. Journal of Applied Psychology, 60, 94-99.
Very good.
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