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4. MEDIA CONSUMPTION AND PERCEPTIONS OF SOCIAL REALITY 83

FIG. 4.1. Prevalence estimates as a function of priming condition and level of TV
viewing. Represents pattern of results across dependent variables (see Shrum et al.,
1998).

priming conditions induced a source-discounting process (heavy viewers
discounted television information to a greater degree than light viewers)
rather than an automatic adjustment process (heavy viewers adjusted
their estimates downward because they were aware they were heavy
viewers, but light viewers saw no need to adjust).

Proposition 4: Motivation to Process Information Moderates the
Cultivation Effect. Proposition 4 is based on research showing that
there are certain conditions under which heuristic processing (as
opposed to systematic processing) is expected to occur (Chaiken et al.,
1989; Petty & Cacioppo, 1986; Sherman & Corty, 1984). If so, then manip-
ulating the types of processing in which people engage should have
implications for whether a cultivation effect is obtained. To be specific, if
people generally process heuristically in the course of constructing their
judgments of prevalence or likelihood of occurrence, then inducing peo-
ple to process heuristically should produce a cultivation effect that does
not differ in magnitude from the cultivation effect obtained when peo-
ple receive no such manipulation. But suppose people are induced to