Do Talk Shows Cultivate Adolescents' Views of the World? A Prolonged-Exposure Experiment

Abstract

The traditional cultivation approach assumes (a) a uniform message across all television genres, (b) a nonselective viewing pattern in the audience, and (c) longterm effects. This study of possible effects of daily talk shows on adolescents involved a prolonged-exposure experiment designed to evaluate effects of exposure to sequences dealing with lesbian or gay male relationships between the content of a specific genre and cultivation measures, independent of third variables. The results show that cultivation effects occurred at both first- and second-order level. However, these effects were restricted to the particular issues. No transfer effects pertaining to a general change of attitudes were observed. It is concluded that cultivation effects are limited to both the genre and issue in question. Accordingly, the identification of cultivating messages within and across different televison genres should be emphasized.