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Chapter 24: Cultivation Theory
West, Introducing Communication Theory, 6e
Chapter 24
Cultivation Theory
Chapter Outline
I. Introduction
• Regardless of the influence and pervasiveness of social media, television still holds a
central place in people’s experiences.
• Cultivation Theory (CT), began as a way to test the impact that all this television viewing
had on viewers, particularly with regard to violence.
o Gerbner began the Cultural Indicators Project in 1967, conducting regular, periodic
examinations of television programming and the “conceptions of social reality that
viewing cultivates in child and adult audiences” (Gerbner and Gross, 1972, p. 174).
• Causal argument is an assertion of cause and effect, including the direction of the
causality.
• Cultivation Theory is a theory that predicts and explains the long-term formation and
shaping of perceptions, understandings, and beliefs about the world as a result of
consumption of media messages.
o Cultivation Theory suggests that mass communication, particularly television,
cultivates certain beliefs about reality that are held in common by mass
6).
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Chapter 24: Cultivation Theory
West, Introducing Communication Theory, 6e
II. Developing Cultivation Theory
• The federal government was concerned about media’s influence on society, especially
media’s possible contribution to the rising levels of violence among young people.
o In 1967, President Lyndon Johnson ordered the creation of the National Commission
on the Causes and Prevention of Violence.
o It was followed in 1972, by the surgeon general’s Scientific Advisory Committee on
Television and Social Behavior.
o Both groups examined media (especially television) and their impact (especially the
effects of aggression and violence). Gerbner, a respected social scientist, was
involved in both efforts.
researchers.
▪ How was violence defined?
▪ Was verbal aggression violence?
▪ Was obviously fake violence on a comedy counted the same as more
realistically portrayed violence on a drama?
▪ Why examine only prime-time network television?
• Gerbner and his associates continuously refined the Index to meet the complaints of its
critics, and what their annual counting demonstrated was that violence appeared on prime-
time television at levels unmatched in the real world.
III. Assumptions of Cultivation Theory
• In advancing the position that “the more time people spend ‘living’ in the television world,
the more likely they are to believe social reality is congruent with television’s reality”
(Riddle, 2010, p. 156), Cultivation Theory makes a number of assumptions.
o Television is essentially and fundamentally different from other forms of mass
media.
o Television shapes society’s way of thinking and relating.
o The influence of television is limited.
• The first assumption of Cultivation Theory underscores the uniqueness of television.
o First, it requires no literacy, as do print media.
o Unlike radio, it combines pictures and sound.
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Chapter 24: Cultivation Theory
West, Introducing Communication Theory, 6e
o Television is the only medium ever invented that is ageless.
• Because it is accessible and available to everyone, television is the “central cultural arm”
of one’s society.
• The second assumption pertains to the influence of television.
o Gerbner and Gross (1972) comment that “the substance of the consciousness
cultivated by TV is not so much specific attitudes and opinions as more basic
assumptions about the ‘facts’ of life and standards of judgment on which conclusions
are based” (p. 175).
o Television’s major cultural function is to stabilize social patterns, to cultivate
resistance to change.
• Cultivation Theory does not speak to what one will do as a result of watching violent
television; instead, it assumes that watching violent TV makes one afraid.
television program causes a specific behavior but rather that watching
television in general has a cumulative and pervasive impact on one’s view of
the world.
IV. Processes and Products of Cultivation Theory
• Cultivation Theory has been applied to a wide variety of effects issues, as well as to
different situations in which television viewers find themselves.
A. The Four-Step Process
television programming in order to demonstrate its most recurring and consistent
presentations of images, themes, values, and portrayals.
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Chapter 24: Cultivation Theory
West, Introducing Communication Theory, 6e
o The second step, formulation of questions about viewers’ social realities, involves
developing questions about people’s understandings of their everyday lives.
o The third step, surveying the audience, requires that the questions from step two
be posed to audience members and that researchers ask these viewers about their
levels of television consumption.
o Step four entails comparing the social realities of light and heavy viewers.
▪ Gerbner (1998) explains that “amount of viewing” is used in relative terms.
▪ Thus, heavy viewers are those who watch the most in any sample of people
that are measured, whereas light viewers are those who watch the least.
B. Mainstreaming and Resonance
• Mainstreaming occurs when, especially for heavier viewers, television’s symbols
dominate other sources of information and ideas about the world.
o As a result of heavy viewing, people’s constructed social realities move toward
the mainstream.
o Heavy viewers tend to believe the mainstreamed realities that the world is a more
dangerous place than it really is.
o Mainstreaming means that heavy television viewers of different co-cultures are
more similar in their beliefs about the world than their varying group membership
divorce.
o Second order effects involve “hypotheses about more general issues and
assumptions” that people make about their environments (Gerbner Gross, Morgan,
and Signorielli, 1986, p. 28).
C. The Mean World Index
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Chapter 24: Cultivation Theory
• A product of Cultivation Theory is the Mean World Index, which consists of a series of
three statements.
o Most people are just looking out for themselves.
o One can’t be too careful in dealing with people.
o Most people would take advantage of an individual if they got the chance.
• Cultivation Theory predicts that agreement with these statements from heavy and light
viewers will differ, with heavy viewers seeing the world as a meaner place than light
viewers.
• It also predicts that the amount of television viewing is the best predictor of people’s
answers, overwhelming other kinds of distinctions among different people.
• Gerbner and colleagues (1980) demonstrated their confidence in the Mean World Index
in a study that showed heavy viewers were much more likely to see the world as a mean
place than were light viewers.
o Heavy viewers held a mainstreamed perception of the world as a mean place,
regardless of factors such as education and income.
o Gerbner and his associates identify a number of other areas where the two types of
viewers might differ.
▪ People with light viewing habits believed that about 1 in 100 will be a
victim of violence; heavy viewers of television predicted that about 1 in 10
will be involved in violence.
▪ Heavy viewers overestimated the amount of violent crime.
▪ Heavy viewers felt that 5 percent of the culture is involved in law
enforcement, whereas light viewers felt that 1 percent is involved.
V. Cultivation Theory as Critical Theory
• Cultivation Theory has made an important contribution to contemporary thinking about
mass communication.
• Horace Newcomb (1978), wrote of Gerbner and his colleagues “Their foresight to collect
of the ice age?
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Chapter 24: Cultivation Theory
West, Introducing Communication Theory, 6e
o Cultivation Theory is criticized for ignoring other issues such as the perceived
realism of the televised content, which might be critical in explaining people’s
understanding of reality (Minnebo and Van Acker, 2004).
C. Heurism
2014), video gaming (Breuer, Kowert, Festl, and Thorsten, 2015), and perceptions
of immigrants (Seate and Mastro, 2015).
D. Test of Time
• Cultivation Theory is heuristic and long lasting, but two issues may be working against
it almost 50 years after its inception.
o First, some studies based on its tenets are failing to find results consistent with the
theory’s predictions.
o Second, as James Shanahan and Michael Morgan (1999) observe, times and media
use are changing: “As more and more people grow up with TV, it is possible that
it will become increasingly difficult to discern differences between light and
heavy viewers” (p. 161).
▪ As TiVo, DVDs, digital cable, and other technologies alter one’s manner of
TV viewing, it is likely that some of the theory’s contentions will no longer
hold true.
• Cultivation Theory offers responses to these criticisms.
o Second, because most television watching is ritual—that is, selected more by time
of day than by specific program or the availability of multiple channels—heavy
viewers will be exposed overall to more of television’s dominant images.
o Most viewers, even with dozens of channels available to them, primarily select
from only five or six, evidencing a very limited range of selection.
Classroom Activities
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Chapter 24: Cultivation Theory
West, Introducing Communication Theory, 6e
1. Sex, Television, and Violence
Objective: To assist students in applying Cultivation Theory to recent research
Materials: Reports on television violence and the v-chip and/or reports from the Henry J.
2. Performing a Cultivation Theory Study
Objective: To have students utilize the four-step method associated with Cultivation
Theory research
3. Is Cultivation Theory a Critical Theory?
Objective: To assist students in evaluating Cultivation Theory
Materials: None
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Chapter 24: Cultivation Theory
b. Have half the group outline positive arguments and the other half outline negative
arguments for the following statement: Cultivation Theory is a critical theory.
c. Choose one affirmative group and one negative group, and have them debate the
issue in front of the class.
4. Cultivation Theory and The Simpsons
Objective: To help students learn to identify and apply the concepts from Cultivation
Theory
Materials: Episode 7F06 of The Simpsons, “Itchy and Scratchy and Marge” (second
season)
Directions:
a. Have students briefly review the theory’s major concepts.
b. Show the episode, and have students jot down possible connections to the theory and
its concepts as they watch.
c. Engage the class in a discussion of the following issues/topics, encouraging students
to use vocabulary from the theory and its framework to make sense of what they saw.
effects of their programs)?
• Does anything occur in the episode that seems to contradict what the theory
says (e.g., the ice age analogy suggests the influence is long-term, but the
effects on Maggie are immediate)?