Page 64 - Media Effects Advances in Theory and Research

3. GROWING UP WITH TELEVISION 53

example, combining data from the 1980, 1983, and 1986 General Social
Surveys, heavy and light viewers who had not been to college were
equally likely to score high on the Mean World Index: 53% of both the
heavy and light viewers agreed with two or three of the items. However,
among those who had some college education, television viewing made a
considerable difference: 28% of the light viewers compared to 43% of the
heavy viewers in this subgroup had a high score on the Mean World
Index. There is thus a 25-percentage point difference between the two
subgroups of light viewers but only a 10-point spread between the two
subgroups of heavy viewers. The heavy viewers of otherwise different
groups are both in the “television mainstream.”
Another example of extrapolated assumptions concerns the image of
women. Our message system analyses in the 1970s and 1980s consistently
showed that men outnumbered women on television by a factor of three
to one; throughout the 1990s, despite all the changes taking place in the
role of women in the real world, the population of the television world
remained between 60 and 65% male (Signorielli & Kahlenberg, in press).
Yet, the dominant majority status of men on television does not mean that
heavy viewers ignore daily experience and underestimate the number of
women in society. Rather, underrepresentation in the world of television
means a relatively narrow (and thus more stereotyped) range of roles and
activities. Most groups of heavy viewers—with other characteristics held
constant—score higher on a “sexism scale” using data from the NORC
General Social Surveys (Signorielli, 1989).
Several other studies have examined assumptions relating to gender
roles in samples of children and adolescents. Morgan (1982) found that
television cultivated such notions as “women are happiest at home rais-
ing children” and “men are born with more ambition than women.” Roth-
schild (1984) found that third- and fifth-grade children who watched
more television were more likely to stereotype both gender-related activi-
ties (e.g., cooking, playing sports) and gender-related qualities (e.g.,
warmth, independence) along traditional gender-role lines. Although
viewing seems to cultivate adolescents’ and children’s attitudes about
gender-related chores, viewing was not related to actually doing these
chores (Morgan, 1987; Signorielli & Lears, 1992).
Other studies have dealt with assumptions about marriage and work.
Signorielli (1993) found that television cultivates realistic views about
marriage but contradictory views about work. Heavy viewing adoles-
cents were more likely to want high-status jobs that would give them a
chance to earn a lot of money but also wanted to have their jobs be rela-
tively easy with long vacations and time to do other things. Signorielli
(1991) found that television viewing cultivates conceptions that reflect
the ambivalent presentation of marriage on television. Adolescents who