Wife Swap as a Microcosm of Conflicting Societies

One reality show that I have always enjoyed watching is "Wife Swap," in which two families that are polar opposites swap wives for two weeks with the promise of a decent sum of money for participating. During the first week, the visiting wife lives by the family's rules, and in the second week the wife is able to impose her rules on her new family. Needless to say, there is always a good deal of conflict, which is why the show is still running.

There are typically two distinct sections to each show. The first part, constituting the first week, has the wife generally being upset with her alien surroundings and planning how she is going to change the family's rules once her turn comes during week two. Once week two rolls around (halfway through the show, conveniently enough), the wife is allowed to implement her family's rules and make whatever changes she wants, which the family always immediately rejects and spends the rest of week two fighting until they are eventually forced to obey them or decide that they may have been wrong. Either way, these two weeks are full of internal attributions, ranging from "This family has terrible parenting skills" to "this family is crazy." After this, they have the segment where the two families meet up and tell each other what they learned and what's wrong with each other, and then they move on to the next show, but that doesn't constitute more than two minutes at the end of the show. However, the structure goes deeper than just how the show is organized.

I recently learned from my Sociology class about the three broad types of group leadership styles that exist, those being Authoritarian, Democratic, and Laissez-Faire. Authoritarian is one in which one leader at the top gets all the power, and the people under this leader have no say whatsoever. It maximizes efficiency/goal-accomplishing-power (Instrumentality) at the cost of the workers' creativity and opinions (Expressiveness). Laissez-Faire is the complete opposite, in which the person at the top doesn't really have any say, and the only goal is that everyone stays happy. This maximizes creativity, but your projects might never get done. Then, you have Democratic, the combination of the two. This method allows everyone to have a say, but the leader still makes the final decisions. Not as much will get done, but everyone will have a say, even if it ends up having no impact on the final decision.

There are also three different types of organizations. The first type is a Voluntary organization, which people join for social and entertainment reasons (such as the Boy Scouts). The second type is Utilitarian, which involve practical matters (an example would be a Homeowner's Association). The third and final type is the Coercive organization, which most people do not willingly join. These sorts of organizations ore usually used for purposes of punishment or total resocialization (completely changing your attitude, etc.), and include such organizations as prison and mental institutions.

Along with these is the idea of Culture Shock, which is when you enter a culture (or organization) unlike your own and are overwhelmed by the differing ideals. After seeing this episode of Wife Swap, the true reason for the success of the show occurred to me. What the producers of Wife Swap do is they take two opposite families (such as in this case, with one Authoritarian family and one Laissez-Faire family) and swap them, and hope culture shock will take care of the rest. From my experience, this usually works, and while the families claim to have learned something by the end of the two weeks, it's getting to the point where I wonder if such reality TV shows won't require an IRB to get on the air.