MIND MOVES Marie MurrayThe sixth annual Big Brother, or BB6, is ending on Channel 4. This is the programme which throws a mixture of hitherto unheard of, primarily young, people who do not know each other into a purpose-built house where they live observed and recorded around the clock by cameras, microphones, television, internet and tabloids for weeks extending into months over the summer.
Big Brother is described as a game show. A significant money prize awaits the survivor. This is the housemate who remains in the house after all others have departed. Departure is effected each Tuesday through secret individual nominations by housemates of who among them should be evicted and why. The two with most nominations go before a public vote to the TV refrain of "Who goes? You decide", followed by mobile or text codes to register their choice. Several million do so.
The following Friday brings the eviction night ritual in which the voted evictee faces public announcement of their eviction and emerges alone to face the animosity or adulation of the crowd assembled outside to witness their departure from the Big Brother house. A moment of fame or infamy, press interviews, footage of their housemates nominating them and a TV compilation of their "best bits" or more entertaining, vulnerable, outrageous, profane, poignant, belligerent, humiliating or degrading moments are presented to them and the viewers.
Christians thrown to the lions? Gladiators fighting to the death for the amusement of the populace? The images and analogies are legion. So are the close-ups of the faces of those whose housemates want them out and whom the public wants removed. This is Reality TV, the so-called Peeping Tom of television, whereby the public provide both players and spectators and participate in making the private public and the public into analysts of the characters and events that unfold.
Yet the analysis is quick to identify that it bears no resemblance to reality because of the contrived nature of the context in which contestants compete. It also defies Peeping Tom definitions, given that participants know they are being observed. Nor could the selection of housemates from the hundreds of thousands of applicants be seen to provide a final quorum of "ordinary" people. Housemates over the years have been informally described as suffering from narcissistic personalities, gender identity dilemmas, nymphomania, exhibitionism, delusional beliefs, paranoia, grandiosity, geekism, problems of anger and impulse control, hypomania, affective or mood instability, alcohol reliance, passive-aggressive patterns and sheer nastiness, bullying, manipulation and Machiavellian tactics. Or should that be reserved for the programme's creators?
And if quasi-psychological nomenclature is not enough, we have had housemates blighted by negative nicknames such as Nasty Nick, The Dark Deceiver and Saskia the Snake. Tendencies towards reticence, self-control, courtesy and calmness are classified as "boring". It is clear that the house occupants are there to entertain the public. Content analysis reveals the behavioural extremes this can reach when survival depends on engagement of an anonymous public and betrayal of one's personal friends in the house.
But what has psychology got to do with this? One disturbing feature of these programmes is the authenticity derived by implying that this is reliable, valid psychological research.
It may well provide an oppportunity to observe the minutiae of human behaviour, of racial, sexual and interpersonal dynamics, personalities under stress, human vulnerability, emotional, social and anti-social behaviour, alongside other less educational sightings. The watchers may be more psychologically significant than the watched.
Yet no psychological qualitative research design could ever ethically allow what occurs on Big Brother. Even under the first principle of participants' fully informed consent it fails, because the unpredictability of BB interventions, tasks and directives means that one cannot know in advance precisely what is being consented to, the mental or behavioural stability of the occupants with whom one will live, or the manner in which TV editing and tabloid headlines will shape how one is viewed.
The list of advisers to the programme contains an impressive inventory of psychiatric and psychological consultants with striking CVs and the "Diary Room" is designed for participants to discuss their difficulties with trained personnel. But where is confidentiality? Who holds consultations in public? Complaints made to the British Psychological Society affirm unease with this use of psychological knowledge. The public has a right to psychological expertise that may provide facts, pointers and perspectives worth considering or selecting from in the course of everyday living.
Elitist information enclaves, of professional supremacy and academic ascendancy rightly belong to the past. Ownership of information is for everyone. But constant ethical vigilance is the imperative when medicine and media coordinate their activities, to ensure that their partnership provides this new and important method of public health provision under the principles of best practice for both.
mmurray@irish-times.ie
Marie Murray is director of psychology at St Vincent's Hospital, Fairview, in Dublin.