ABSTRACT

This chapter discusses on research that investigates the effects of television viewing on a range of judgments, including social perceptions, attitudes, values, and beliefs. It provides a particular focus on understanding the psychological mechanisms that underlie this effect. The chapter elaborates on these explanatory mechanisms, and in doing so to reconcile some of the disparate findings from previous research. Although support for the influence of frequent consumption of the television message has received impressive support, this research has also been subject to frequent criticism. Although the need for a psychological explanation of cultivation effects was recognized early on, early attempts to generate and validate such explanations were generally unsuccessful. The types of frequency and probability judgments used to measure cultivation effects have a number of important characteristics that have implications for how television may influence those judgments. Participants were prompted to recall or imagine an instance of particular events, some of which are frequently portrayed on television.