Page 63 - Media Effects Advances in Theory and Research

52 GERBNER ET AL.

feel that the elderly are a “vanishing breed”—that “compared to 20 years
ago,” there are fewer of them, that they are in worse health, and that they
don’t live as long—all contrary to fact (Gerbner, Gross, Signorielli, & Mor-
gan, 1980).
As another example, consider how likely people on television are to
encounter violence compared to the rest of us. Three decades of message
system analyses show that half or more of television characters are
involved each week in some kind of violent action. Although FBI statistics
have clear limitations, they indicate that in any one year fewer than 1% of
people in the United States are victims of criminal violence. We have
found considerable support for the proposition that heavy exposure to the
world of television cultivates exaggerated perceptions of the number of
people involved in violence in any given week (Gerbner et al., 1979, 1980;
Shanahan & Morgan, 1999), as well as numerous other inaccurate beliefs
about crime and law enforcement.
The “facts” of the television world are evidently learned quite well,
whether or not viewers profess a belief in what they see on television or
claim to be able to distinguish between factual and fictional presentations.
Indeed, most of what we know, or think we know, is a mixture of all the
stories and images we have absorbed. The labels of “factual,” which may
be highly selective, and “fictional,” which may be highly realistic, are more
questions of style than function within a total framework of knowledge.
But in any case, the investigation is not limited to the lessons of television
“facts” compared to real-world (or even imaginary but different) statistics.
The repetitive “lessons” we learn from television, beginning with infancy,
are likely to become the basis for a broader worldview, making television a
significant source of general values, ideologies, and perspectives as well as
specific assumptions, beliefs, and images. Some of the most interesting and
important issues for cultivation analysis involve the symbolic transforma-
tion of message system data into hypotheses about more general issues
and assumptions (see also Hawkins & Pingree, 1982, 1990).
One example of this is what we have called the “mean world” syn-
drome. Our message data say little directly about either the selfishness or
altruism of people, and there are certainly no real-world statistics about
the extent to which people can be trusted. Yet, we have found that long-
term exposure to television, in which frequent violence is virtually
inescapable, tends to cultivate the image of a relatively mean and danger-
ous world. Responses of heavier compared to matching groups of lighter
viewers suggest the conception of reality in which greater protection is
needed, most people “cannot be trusted,” and most people are “just look-
ing out for themselves” (Gerbner et al., 1980; Signorielli, 1990).
The Mean World Index, composed of violence-related items, also illus-
trates the mainstreaming implications of viewing (Signorielli, 1990). For