Can You Be A Reality TV Player?

B O S T O N, Aug. 30, 2000 -- Could reality TV cause a contestant to lose touch with reality?

While some psychologists say they fear participants on reality-TV shows like CBS’ Big Brother and Survivor are being thrown into situations that could cause a meltdown, others say these thrill-seeking personality types could take it all in stride.

With the success of these shows — some 50 million viewers watched the last episode of Survivor — and more in the works, armchair contestants may wonder if they have what it takes to play.

Some of the down sides, experts say, include severe stress analogous to POW-like conditions and depression after fame fades away. But money and a sense of accomplishment for facing a challenge could counteract the negatives.

Reality-TV wannabes can be assured CBS hired psychologists to guide every step of the process, screening the contestants beforehand, counseling them during, and debriefing them afterwards.

“It’s a pressure cooker,” says psychologist Kate Wachs, a Chicago-based relationship therapist, discussing the shows. “It’s like being a prisoner of war — being confined and watched and manipulated. You’re going to get cabin fever.”

Wachs rattles off a litany of possible clinical outcomes: “depression, anger; some might get anxious, claustrophobic and irritable.”

Shrinks Every Step of the Way

“It can be harmful, depending on how tightly-wrapped people are before they get there,” agrees Jennifer Taylor, a clinical psychologist at McLean Hospital outside of Boston. “[For] anyone who takes it very seriously, it can be harmful.”

And CBS is taking the psychological effects very seriously. In an earlier version of Big Brother in Sweden, one houseguest committed suicide after being kicked off the show.

But you don’t have to be crazy to volunteer to play: Although a Newsweek survey found only 42 percent of those polled would want to be a Survivor contestant, some shrinks admit they would consider jumping in.

Stuart Fischoff, professor of media psychology at California State University in Los Angeles, says five of his colleagues told him they’d applied.

Thrill-Seekers Are Good Players

So what does it take to be contestant? Fischoff says these shows attract people who are on the “upper spectrum” of exhibitionism, but aren’t clinically compulsive.

Gene Ondrusek, chief psychologist for the Center of Executive Health and Scripps Hospital in La Jolla, Calif., who served as Survivor’s consulting therapist, says he screened candidates using extensive six-hour written tests and personal interviews, looking to cast applicants with a “thrill-seeking personality.”

Thrill-seekers, according to American Psychological Association past president Frank Farley, who coined the term back in the ’80s, are energetic risk-takers and independent thinkers, who seek constant stimulation and novel situations.

“Type T” people are also mentally resistant to stress and failure, adds Farley, a psychologist at Temple University in Philadelphia. “These personality types can take a lot of knocks and pick themselves up and go at it again.”

Ondrusek notes the Survivor screening was a success: “No one wimped out or quit,” he says, adding, “everyone was able to navigate the process without untoward effects and are now reintegrating into their new lives with success.”

But psychologists were still on call, just in case.

Big Brother’s psychologist, Dr. Augusto Britton Del Rio, a psychology professor at California State University at Northridge, is available “24 hours a day” to counsel its captive houseguests.

So far, according to one report, several Big Brother house guests have spoken in the show’s off-camera “Red Room” with Del Rio, who reportedly told some of the houseguests the show had been emotionally harmful to them.

Ondrusek also debriefed the Survivors after they were voted off in sessions he said ran anywhere from few minutes to “all night long.” “We’re not interested in damaging anybody psychologically,” he says.

People More Stress Than Cameras

Post-show counseling is not new: several of the rowdier daytime TV talk shows refer guests to local psychologists following tapings.

Though much has been made of the Orwellian surveillance, psychologists say the constant cinematic scrutiny is probably the least of the contestants’ concerns.

“It’s a novelty in the beginning, then a stressful annoyance, and then you begin to forget about it,” Fischoff says of Big Brother’s 24 cameras.

More likely, he adds, the stress comes from the clashing personalities and being cooped up and isolated from the world.

Psychologists also agree getting booted from the shows and kicking others off can be emotionally troubling. “You’d have to be sociopathic not to care,” Fischoff says.

“Obviously, people had emotional reactions, there was frustration,” Survivor counselor Ondrusek concedes. “The idea was to keep it within normal boundaries.”

Fleeting Fame Depressing

Finally, the players’ 15 minutes of fame may expire quickly, leaving some of them feeling shortchanged.

“For anyone who had a life on the stage or in front of a camera, many get devastated when the lights go out,” says Fischoff. “For many people, it is extremely depressing.”

But besides the money from either winning or landing advertising deals and book contracts, which obviously can change people’s lives, there is nothing like the attention.

“How often do everyday folk get a chance to get fame and fortune and shake up their lives?” Farley asks. “I think they’ll get opportunities that will change their life enough that they’ll be satisfied.”