Psychological Processes Underlying Cultivation Effects Further Tests of Construct Accessibility

This study tested whether the accessibility of information in memory mediates the cultivation effect (i.e., the effect of television viewing on social perceptions), consistent with the availability heuristic (Tversky & Kahneman, 1973). Accessibility was operationalized as the time needed to generate frequency estimates of the real-world prevalence of crime, marital discord, and particular occupations. The independent variable was amount of soap opera viewing, and the study used only very heavy (5 or more hours per week) and very light (zero hours per week) viewers. Heavy viewers gave significantly higher frequency estimates (cultivation effect) and responded significantly faster (accessibility effect) than did light viewers, replicating the findings of Shrum and O'Gunn (1993). Soap opera viewing also had an indirect effect on the frequency estimates of crime and occupational prevalence through its effect on response latency, supporting the notion of accessibility as a mediating variable. No such mediating effect was noted for marital discord estimates.