Affluenza: Television Use and Cultivation of Materialism

Abstract

The cultivation theory claims that central messages of television become accepted views of reality among heavy viewers. The researcher conducted 2 secondary analyses to determine whether a correlation exists between heavy TV viewing and materialist values. The first analysis was of Simmons Market Research Bureau 1996 data, which included 21,594 respondents. Twenty-nine questions regarding materialistic values were compared with TV viewing, heavy to light quintiles regarding prime-time, daytime, and cable TV viewing. No significant correlations emerged.