I learned that if I do not turn the TV on, I do not miss it. If I turned it on, it was incredibly hard to turn off.
So when my wife and I moved into the house we're in, I insisted that the television not be in a space where we were likely to sit often. We had an extra little bedroom upstairs, and that became the TV room. It is small and spare and not particularly comfortable. I would submit that this *is* exactly controlling my behavior. Sometimes that means getting rid of the TV entirely. In our case I'm setting up an environment in which it is less likely that we're going to plop down in front of the TV and blow 3 hours on things that don't do us much good. We still watch 60 minutes and some of the HBO series (serieses?) and we're Netflix people, but altogether we watch about 2-4 hours a week. (I suppose I should add the occasional sporting event to that total.) But controlling behavior just is setting up contingencies and situations, unless you're talking about some sort of magical "self-control" or "will." m ------- "Whatever power the United States Constitution envisions for the Executive in its exchanges with other nations or with enemy organizations in times of conflict, it most assuredly envisions a role for all three branches when individual liberties are at stake." --- July 20,2006 US District Court for Northern California > -----Original Message----- > From: David Epstein [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] > Sent: Tuesday, October 24, 2006 6:54 PM > To: Teaching in the Psychological Sciences (TIPS) > Subject: [tips] Re: I like my TV time! > > On Tue, 24 Oct 2006, Annette Taylor, Ph. D. went: > > > Well, at the risk of ad hominem attacks and serious derision: > > None from me. > > What I find interesting about this topic is that people who > choose not to have TV sets often speak as if they cannot > control their behavior in the presence of a TV set. It's as > if the only two choices are excess and abstinence. > > As I wrote before, I don't find it at all challenging to > record the shows I want to see, watch them without > commercials, and then turn off the set. > > I don't have a child (yet), but that's a behavior I'd > probably want to model. > > --David Epstein > [EMAIL PROTECTED] > > --- > To make changes to your subscription go to: > http://acsun.frostburg.edu/cgi-bin/lyris.pl?enter=tips&text_mo de=0&lang=english > > --- To make changes to your subscription go to: http://acsun.frostburg.edu/cgi-bin/lyris.pl?enter=tips&text_mode=0&lang=english
