The Fruits of Cultivation Analysis: A Reexamination of Some Effects of Television Watching

A set of items from the General Social Survey for 1975 and 1977 measuring alienation and fear of walking near one's home at night, which were claimed by Gerbner et al. (1978a) to be related to heavy television watching, are reanalyzed with simultaneous controls for age, sex, race, income, education, hours worked per week outside the home, church attendance, membership in voluntary associations, and population size. The effects of television watching on responses to these items which were claimed by Gerbner et al. are largely absent in this analysis. Items in the same data set used by Gerbner et al., but not included in their analysis are analyzed using the technique above, with results that fail to support the contention of Gerbner and his associates. The implications of these findings for a cultivation theory of television effects are discussed. Michael Hughes is Assistant Professor of Sociology, Virginia Polytechnic Institute and State University. The author wishes to thank Richard A. Peterson, Walter R. Gove, Cathleen Burnett, Ricky McCarty, Michael R. Wood, Jerome B. Price, and two anonymous reviewers for their comments on an earlier draft. Also helpful were conversations with Anthony Oberschall, G. Russell Carpenter, John Ryan, Lynn Ballew, and Christian D. Hughes, and research assistance provided by Eileen Covey and Timothy J. Carter. Public Opinion Quarterly ?) 1980 by The Trustees of Columbia University Published by Elsevier North-Holland, Inc. 0033-362X/80/0044-287/$1.75 This content downloaded from 157.55.39.110 on Sat, 24 Sep 2016 04:41:39 UTC All use subject to http://about.jstor.org/terms