Who hasn’t raced home to watch a Big Brother eviction, The Apprentice or a bit of Katie & Alex? Diving into someone else’s life for half an hour can provoke a range of emotions and experiences that the daily grind fails to deliver. We witness a world full of passionate embraces, cunning deception and characters teetering on the brink of radical change or chaos.

Initially dismissed by media experts as a passing fad, reality TV now dominates the schedules. Morecambe And Wise or The Generation Game were once the modern fireplace around which the family gathered, but now it’s Strictly Come Dancing or The X Factor. More than nine million viewers tuned in to the Strictly Christmas special, a significant figure in our multi-channel world.

Behavioural insight
It has been criticised for dumbing down its audience, but reality TV is undeniably informative. It can bring culture to millions (Clash Of The Choirs), break down prejudice towards mental illness (How Mad Are You?) and provide an insight into human behaviour. But whether you enjoy it or can’t stand it, reality TV has entered the collective mindset and affects all of us more than we may realise — with some worrying implications.

Pioneering reality shows, such as the 1970s classic The Family, were relatively innocent documentaries of human life. But now producers have become much more involved in guiding what contestants say or do. Stuart Murphy, creative director of Twofour Broadcast, has been producing reality TV for the past decade, including recent hits such as Make My Body Younger. ‘Viewers were once quite happy watching not much happen,’ says Murphy. ‘But audiences now demand more from reality TV.’

Manufactured emotions
Moments of shock, awe and devastation are packed into bite-size episodes of reality TV. But these dramatic scenes are often far from organic. ‘One of the things you learn in this industry is how to shock your audience,’ says Murphy. ‘If you genuinely shock someone, they will just look slightly traumatised. So producers gently prepare the characters for revelations so they respond in a TV-friendly way.’

Murphy admits that reality TV is  cheaper to produce than soaps or dramas, but insists this is not the main reason for the glut of reality shows. ‘Reality shows can also help us manage our emotions. When we see real people behaving in unexpected, contradictory ways it can make us more comfortable with our own complicated natures.’

But does reality TV also make us more comfortable with losing our temper or ridiculing others? The term ‘humilitainment’ was coined by media psychologists to describe the tendency for viewers to be attracted to scenes of humiliation or mortification, for example bullying, nudity and drunken antics.

According to psychology professor Dr Douglas Gentile, one worrying effect of reality TV is that it might make us more aggressive. Gentile released a study revealing that those who watch more indirect aggression on TV — such as gossiping, eye-rolling or making sarcastic comments — behave more aggressively. The study also highlights that when aggression is perceived to be more realistic, it has a bigger influence on the viewer.

Body issues
Many people look to television as a guide to what is ideal, and the plastic-surgery makeover genre is ?becoming increasingly popular. Dr Julie Albright, professor of psychology at the University of Southern California, has completed a study revealing that women who watch plastic-surgery reality shows are more anxious about their bodies and more likely to see their ‘problem’ body parts as a moral failing.

While viewers may be savvy enough to realise that ‘real life’ shows are only loosely based on a true story, the more we watch TV, the more tempted we become to believe in the world it represents. But while TV prefers the visual impact of primary colours, the real world is shaded with a more complex palette.

Ultimately, we have a responsibility for what appears on our screens — if we didn’t watch reality shows, broadcasters wouldn’t commission them. So while we continue to tune in, we should remember that in ?real life there is no diary room to repent in, should we lash out at a loved one. It may also be useful to switch channels more often. ‘We might now look to comedy or drama to see the genuinely ordinary,’ says Murphy. ‘You can’t depend on reality TV to provide that anymore.’