In the 1970's, Maxwell McCombs and Donald Shaw set out to understand how news organizations affect what people view as their most pressing civic issues. In their study they examined local (Chapel Hill, N.C.) newspapers and news broadcasts and then asked residents to list what issues they were most concerned about.
What they found was telling.
A majority of the respondents cited concerns that matched the front-page and lead stories in their local newspaper and TV news broadcasts. They also found that the news stories that newspapers and broadcasts devoted less time and space to ended up being on the bottom of the respondents' lists. Over the years, repeated studies by other researchers have yielded similar results.
A popular phrase has been linked to these studies and it is that news organizations "don't tell you what to think, but what to think about." This line of reasoning is the Agenda Setting Theory and once a person realizes it through exposure to the research or through common sense, the way they look at news is never the same.
But let's take this idea in a lateral direction. What if we applied what we know about the Agenda Setting Theory to our own lives? ------- Who is telling us "what to think about?" Who is creating the itinerary in our careers, our personal lives and relationships?
If we reflect long enough, we can probably remember a time where we ended up going somewhere we didn't want to go or committing to an activity because we didn't have a better alternative. Or worse, we had no alternative.
It happens in meetings where a highly prepared or in some cases an overzealous co-worker hijacks the agenda with their handouts and unsolicited power point presentations. It happens when we don't know where the best places to eat are or exciting places to go in our locales and let our friends decide. And it can happen in marital or dating relationships when one partner knows what direction they are headed, in terms of career and life in general, and the other one doesn't. In all of these situations the ones with no agenda usually follows the lead of the sure, even when it is not in their best interests.
In life, it can be exhilarating to go with the flow and cooperate with others. However, at some point this tendency to ‘go along' means that we are letting others run our lives for us. If this is a problem then we need to be prepared with our own agendas when the subject of what we need to think about comes up so the destination we arrive at is one of our own choosing.
Bakari Akil II, Ph.D. is the author of Super You! 101 Ways to Maximize your Potential! Check out his page on Twitter.
