Distorted Views of Reality?

For my senior seminar project this semester, I chose to research reality television and I figured that since this is a media studies class, this might be an interesting topic to discuss on my blog as well. For the project, I wanted to find out whether or not watching reality television caused viewers to form false perceptions of the world in which they live. I used a survey to gather new data for the project and asked basic questions on things like the amounts of time spent watching television (and reality television specifically), as well as more specific questions about the portrayals of different kinds of relationships, social activities, etc. I also asked questions about whether audiences changed their own behaviors or altered their priorities based on what they saw on screen. The survey results showed that most of those who responded were light television viewers and for the most part, identified each element of reality television as unrealistic. The majority of participants also agreed that reality television downplayed things like working hard for success and caused some viewers to change the ways in which they prioritized things in their own lives. Obviously, the results only represented one distinct group of television viewers, so there is still a lot of room for future research, but I just thought I would share this and see what everyone else thought about the subject. Do you think reality television has significant effects on people who watch it regularly?