Cultivation theory is a social theory which examines the long-term effects of television. "The primary proposition of cultivation theory states that the more time people spend "living" in the television world, the more likely they are to believe social reality portrayed on television." Cultivation leaves people with a misperception of what is true in our world.
Developed by George Gerbner and Larry Gross of the University of Pennsylvania, cultivation theory derived from several large-scale research projects as part of an overall research project entitled 'Cultural Indicators'. The purpose of the Cultural Indicators project was to identify and track the 'cultivated' effects of television on viewers. They were "concerned with the effects of television programming on the attitudes and behaviors of the American public." They claimed that because TV contains so much violence, people who spend the most time in front of the tube develop an exaggerated belief in a mean and scary world. He identified two types of TV viewers - heavy viewers who watch 4 or more hours daily and light viewers who watch for 2 hours or less a day. He predicted that heavy views would perceive the world as a more violent place as violence is in 80% of TV shows. He found that by watching more TV a person can become:
- More materialistic
- indifferent about environmental issues
- more violent
- more racist
- unaware of what is TV and what is reality.
it can perpetuate stereotypes such as “all Asians are either smart or ninjas” or “every black male is most likely a criminal.” Although, this is very much not true. However, it can also give off positive stereotypes as well as negative. An example of this would be a TV show like Skins where the teenagers on the show, smoke, drink, do drugs and get into fights often which could lead to other teens who are watching the show to do it. How these teens are represented in Skins could lead to older people seeing teens in a very negative light, and being scared of teens and nervous to be around them.
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