Morgan, & Signorielli, 1986; Ogles, 1987). One of the criticisms of cultivation theory
is that the particular mechanisms that might be responsible for the effect are not well
specified or understood (see Hawkins, Pingree, & Adler, 1987). This weakness has
encouraged some scholars to offer various explanations that go beyond Gerbner’s
original formulation, but might provide some plausible insights about how cultiva-
tion might work. For example, Ogles & Hoffner (1987) relied upon the notion of an
“availability heuristic” (Tversky & Kahneman, 1973) in offering an explanation for
media cultivation. The essence of this idea is that when viewers are called upon to
make judgments about the real world, they draw heavily upon whatever is readily
available in their memory that might be relevant to the judgment. Heavy and recent
exposure to TV programs constitutes one likely source of information for viewers to
incorporate in their judgments [Shrum (1996) tests this idea in the context of media
cultivation]. As noted by Sparks, et al. (1997), a number of studies support the idea
that people are more likely to accept something as true when they are exposed to the
idea repeatedly (Arkes, Hackett, & Boehm, 1989; Bacon, 1979; Begg, Anas, &
Farinacci, 1992; Begg & Armour, 1991; Hasher, Goldstein, & Toppino, 1977;
Schwartz, 1982). Zaragoza and Mitchell (1996) go even farther in noting that the
actual truth of the repeated statements appears to be irrelevant to their acceptance.
Mere repetition leads to more acceptance. If this is the case, following Sparks, et al.
(1997), it seems reasonable to expect that viewers who see repeated depictions of the
paranormal on television might be influenced by these depictions in situations where
they are called upon to express judgments about the reality of paranormal phenom-
ena. Of course, this theoretical orientation assumes that exposure to TV will result in
repeated exposure to paranormal depictions. While there appear to be no content
analyses in the literature to substantiate this assumption, there is little question upon
examining the TV schedule (see title mentioned earlier) that paranormal depictions
show up in abundance. It is also the case that Hollywood producers generally
acknowledge that the writer’s strike in the 1980’s produced a heavy reliance on
“reality” television, which led inevitably to more frequent presentations of UFO
sightings, psychics, and the like [R. Kiviat, personal communication, November 9,
1999].
1
Data from systematic content analyses would be a welcome addition to this
literature.
In proceeding with the present study, our first expectation about the results of the
survey followed Sparks, et al. (1997) and is supported by the literature reviewed to
this point:
H1: Television viewing (particularly viewing of programs that contain paranormal events) will be
positively correlated with the tendency to endorse beliefs in paranormal phenomena.
If this correlation did emerge, it need not indicate the presence of a media effect.
Instead, it might indicate that individuals who tend to believe in the paranormal tend
to seek out exposure to media containing these themes. Of course, the possibility of a
reciprocal relationship between the two variables is also possible.
In the light of Sparks et al.’s (1997) failure to find evidence for the resonance
hypothesis, in addition to H1, we had posed a research question:
RQ1: Would any relationship between television exposure and paranormal beliefs be stronger for
individuals who report that they have had some personal life experience with paranormal
events?
It seems clear that cultivation theory would predict such a finding, but the first survey
to test this notion failed to uncover support for the idea.
102
COMMUNICATION MONOGRAPHS
Finally, we were generally interested in the impact of demographic variables, if
any, on the relationship between TV exposure and paranormal beliefs. This lead to
the formulation of a second research question:
RQ2: What impact do demographic variables like age, sex, income, education and religious belief
have on the relationship between TV exposure and paranormal beliefs?
Method
Respondents
Using randomly selected pages from the city phone directory, followed by
randomly selected numbers from those pages, 200 telephone interviews were
completed during the Fall of 1997 in a medium-sized city in the Midwest (males: n
ϭ
93; females: n
ϭ 102).
2
The interviewers were members of an advanced undergradu-
ate course in mass communication theory. Each interviewer was trained in two
sessions by the authors and sample interviews were conducted to heighten standard-
ized procedures across the interviewers. In total, 284 individuals were contacted and
84 refused to participate (final response rate
ϭ 70%). The interviews took about
15-minutes to complete. All respondents were screened at the outset of the conversa-
tion to assure that they were at least 18 years of age.
Measurement
Television viewing habits. Following procedures used in past studies of this type
(Sparks & Ogles, 1990; Sparks, et al. 1997), respondents were asked to estimate the
amount of time they spent watching television. Respondents were asked to estimate
the total number of hours of television they watched on an average weekday, an
average Saturday, and an average Sunday. The weekday total was multiplied by five
and added to the two weekend day totals to yield an average viewing time for the
week in hours.
Respondents were also asked about their exposure to several specific programs
that routinely feature paranormal themes: Unsolved Mysteries, Sightings, The X-Files,
Early Edition, Psychic Friends, Beyond the Paranormal Borderline, Touched By an Angel,
Profiler, and Millennium. For each of these programs, they were asked to report if they
had ever viewed the program. If a respondent indicated that he/she had seen the
program before, a follow-up question asked for an estimate of how many times the
program had been seen. The categories for this estimate were: “1–2 times”, “3–5
times”, “6 –10 times”, and “over 10 times”. These categories were provided as a
convenient way for respondents to estimate the number of times the program had
been viewed. For purposes of coding and data analysis, the maximum number in
each category was recorded as the response and the variable was treated as a ratio
level variable. Responses in the maximum category were coded as “11.”
Paranormal beliefs. For purposes of comparison, the same twenty-item scale
employed by Sparks, et al. (1997) was used to assess respondents’ paranormal
beliefs. This measure was based on other measures that have appeared in the
literature but sought to improve on a number of problems with question wording
and ambiguous referents (see Jones, Russell, and Nickel, 1977; Tobacyk & Milford,
1983). The measure assesses paranormal belief in ten different areas: 1) UFOs and
space aliens, 2) astral-projection, 3) extrasensory perception (ESP), 4) astrology or
the use of horoscopes, 5) supernatural physical healing, 6) palm reading, 7) ghosts or
103
TELEVISION AND PARANORMAL BELIEFS