Running Head: LITERATURE REVIEW

Cultivation Theory 1

Running Head: LITERATURE REVIEW

Literature Review

Kirsten Juntunen

Western Washington University

Cultivation Theory’s Effects Leading to Mean World Syndrome

Television has become the main source of storytelling in today’s society and it is watched excessively by many people around the world. Hear lies the problem; Cultivation theory asserts that an excessive amount of television viewing can drastically alter an individuals thoughts, feelings, and beliefs. Furthermore, “heavy television viewers make social reality judgments more aligned with the televised reality than the actual world to a greater degree than do light viewers” (Bradley, 2007, p.1). Gruesome acts of televised violence are in no scarcity on the screens that emerge from the corners of almost every household across the world. Not to mention, the often, out of proportion, news reports that vividly reveal to their audience a world that has been successfully taken over by crime. They do this by focusing more than half of their air time on negative stories and if the reports are covering a catastrophe of extreme proportions, or a highly gruesome crime, news stations tend to put their information on repeat. With this type of exposure to negative informationpeoplemay be subject to a phenomenon known as mean world syndrome (Wilkinson & Fletcher, 1995, p.2). With information and programming readily available and highly prominent throughout many societies, researchers studying cultivation have discussed many variables in regard to why some people develop a mean world syndrome.

Gerbner (1999) has extended this line of research. A 1994 University of Miami study of local television news…found that time devoted to crime ranged from 23% to 50%...while violent crime in the city remained constant, involving less than 0.1% of the population.” With constant coverage of violent crime on the news and television programs, the lack of understanding seen by the public on what is taking place around the world and in one’s community may easily be due in part to time spent in front of the television and the wealth of information available to people for viewing pleasure. By exploring the contradictory beliefs between average people and media coverage and showing how easily individuals may be manipulated leading to negative feelings about society is incentive to explore this topic further.

In a older study that contains important information related to the study of the cultivation theory Gerbner (1967) points out that a cumulative amount of time will alter and individuals social reality judgments, this study of television viewers will identify the beliefs that people describe after substantial amounts of viewing. Cultivation theory, according to Gerbner, produces a by-product know as MSW, due to a combination of heavy television viewing and exposure to violence and the exposure to violence and the overemphasizing of crime depicted throughout television broadcasting. Heavy television viewers, or those who watch four or more hours of television per day, will be portrayed by those who illustrate the typical characteristics and ideologies of long time viewers (Gerbner, 1967).

There is also preliminary evidence that suggests there are three significant criterions that illustrate a person as having a MWS. According to a study by Markus Appel (2008) there are three criterions that include distrust, belief in a scary world, and fear related behaviors due to cumulative television viewing and the representation of terror and/or violence depicted in local/national news, crime based dramas, and similar media producing related images. In addition to these criterions, Appel (2008) was able to assemble an accurate scale to measure these sub-categories. These criterions are the key to understanding the phenomenon known as mean world syndrome.

A brief description is needed for these three criterions to link the upcoming research. The first of the three parts associated with MWS is distrust. The concept of trust can be identified as an important tool to social interaction, originating from sociology, psychology, economics, political science, and mass communication (Kasperson, Dominic, and Seth). The importance of trust throughout everyday life and activities is emphasized in family, intercultural, occupational, and two-way communication as well as other attributes. Here, we start to see why this research is so important to the field of communication. According to the research when trust is broken, many individuals sense a lack of loyalty in their counterparts and communication barriers are noticeable, allowing individuals to incorporate skewed beliefs into their thought process. Due to over fictionalized and over generalized violence with a combination of viewing television for an excessive amount certain people will establish a distrust in others stemming from the fear of being personally victimized (Appel, 2008).

Moving on to the second of the three criterions, also a subdivision of MWS, is the belief in a scary world. This, in part, is due to the constant depictions of “law breaking” and often graphic violence that accompanies television (Kasperson, Dominic, and Seth). And the final subdivision according to Appel (2008) is fear related behaviors. One of the most notable behaviors that television can induce on an individual is psychological harm. According to Cheung and Chan (1996) fear related behaviors may also include the emulation of what is seen on television. Low moral value and materialism are what constitute people defining the world as fierce, inhumane, and mean. In addition to, and to build on this idea, theorists have asserted that the abundance of consumerist content in television and advertisement is responsible for the observer’s materialism (Pollay & Mittal, 1993).

An examination of the previous research on the connection of cultivation theory and the phenomenon of mean world syndrome lead me to believe that further work in this area should be conducted. The idea that television can induce thoughts of fear and irrational suspicion is no longer a new subject but there are still areas that can and should be studied properly. The preceding research has focused on using media statistics and comparing and contrasting them with the real life probability of crime happening to them. They then focused on how people perceived the probability of crime occurring to them or someone they know. Also the results of previous research point out the unreasonable fear of crime and overgeneralization of crime statistics may be closely correlated with the amount and type of television viewed.

My further research would include:

H1: Among television viewers, those who spend a longer amount of time watching TV will be more prone to synthetic beliefs and stereotypes than people who devote a lesser amount of time to television (IV= people labeled as high television viewers vs. people who are not labeled as high television viewers; DV= beliefs/ideas held about social reality).

R1: Are age and cognitive abilities significant factors in determining who will be more affected by television viewing? (IV= age and cognitive ability of television viewer; DV=which age group is more prone to mean world syndrome and do the cognitive abilities of individuals help them rationalize the difference between television and the real world).

References

Bradley, S. (2007). “cognitive Moderation of the Cultivation Effect: Processing Strategy and

Remote Memory.” (pp. 1-7). Conference Papers –International Communication

Association 2007 Annual Meeting.

Cheung, C. &Chan, C. (1996). “Television Viewing and Mean World Value in Hong Kong’s

Adolecents” (pp. 351-364). Society for Personality Reasarch.

Gerbner, G. (1999). “The Stories We Tell.” (pp.9-15). Peace Review March1999, 11, 1.

Pollay, R.W., & Mittal, B. (1993). Here’s the beef: factors, determinants, and segments in

consumer criticism of advertising. Journal of Marketing, 57(3), 99-114.

Wood, J. (2006). Communication Mosaics: An Introduction to the Field of Communication. (pp.

306). Belmont, California. Thomson Wadsworth.