The DOI matches its Crossref record; 21 of the 21 references it cites were found in a registry or an index.
The “Scary World” of the Nonviewer and Other Anomalies: A Reanalysis of Gerbner et al.'s Findings on Cultivation Analysis Part I
Abstract
This article critically examines the statistical evidence presented by Gerbner et al. to support their assertion that television-viewing “cultivates” distorted perceptions of the “real world.” In Part I, I point out discrepancies in the items, samples, and coding categories employed, and show that when controls are applied simultaneously (rather than singly) there is no linear relationship between amount of viewing and the provision of “television answers.” This reanalysis concludes that the “cultivation” hypothesis lacks empirical support and that the very data presented in its support argue strongly for rejecting the assertion that it has any scientific basis in fact.
Overview
The claims and statistics of this paper haven’t been checked yet.
Run the check — free, no account needed. It reads the open-access text and checks the sources it cites.
Integrity signals
Registry
Cites
Statistics
Verification
Claims the paper makes
The claims and statistics of this paper haven’t been checked yet.
Run the check — free, no account needed. It reads the open-access text and checks the sources it cites.
Self-check
Percentages, sums and reported differences re-computed from the paper’s own numbers.
The self-check needs the paper’s full text.
Citations
Cites
Living with Television: The Violence Profile
Gerbner, G., & Gross, L. (1976) · Journal of Communication · doi:10.1111/j.1460-2466.1976.tb01397.x · Cited by 2,357
The Science and Politics of IQ
Fulker, D. W., & Kamin, L. J. (1975) · The American Journal of Psychology · doi:10.2307/1421782 · Cited by 1,006
The Use and Abuse of Biology: An Anthropological Critique of Sociobiology
Sahlins, M. (1976) · doi:10.3998/mpub.20259 · Cited by 912
Greeley, A. M., & Gans, H. (1964) · International Migration Digest · doi:10.2307/3002906 · Cited by 901
An Examination of Need-Satisfaction Models of Job Attitudes
Salancik, G. R., & Pfeffer, J. (1977) · Administrative Science Quarterly · doi:10.2307/2392182 · Cited by 848
General Social Surveys: 1972 - 1994; cumulative codebook
Davis, J. A., & Smith, T. (1994) · Cited by 842
Theories of Mass Communication.
Enzer, H. A., & Fleur, M. L. D. (1967) · American Sociological Review · doi:10.2307/2091765 · Cited by 735
Theories of Mass Communication.
Smith, D. D., & de Fleur, M. L. (1967) · Social Forces · doi:10.2307/2575212 · Cited by 617
On Equality of Educational Opportunity.
Milner, M., Mosteller, F., & Moynihan, D. P. (1973) · Contemporary Sociology · doi:10.2307/2062443 · Cited by 520
Multiple classification analysis
Andrews, F. M. (1967) · Medical Entomology and Zoology · Cited by 501
Cited by
Social Cognitive Theory of Mass Communication
Bandura, A. (2001) · Media Psychology · doi:10.1207/s1532785xmep0303_03 · Cited by 3,386
Fear of crime: A review of the literature
Hale, C. (1996) · International Review of Victimology · doi:10.1177/026975809600400201 · Cited by 1,579
The Role of Television in the Construction of Consumer Reality
O'Guinn, T. C., & Shrum, L. J. (1997) · Journal of Consumer Research · doi:10.1086/209483 · Cited by 403
Wahlberg, A. A. F., & Sjoberg, L. (2000) · Journal of Risk Research · doi:10.1080/136698700376699 · Cited by 345
Cultivation Theory and Research.: A Conceptual Critique
POTTER, W. J. (1993) · Human Communication Research · doi:10.1111/j.1468-2958.1993.tb00313.x · Cited by 253
Metadata
- Authors
- Hirsch, P. M.
- Venue
- Communication Research
- Publisher
- SAGE Publications
- Published
- 1980-10
- Volume
- 7
- Issue
- 4
- Pages
- 403-456
- ISSN
- 0093-6502 (ISSN-L)
- 1552-3810
- OpenAlex
- W2254697626
- Cited by
- 265
- References
- 21
- FWCI
- 128.27
- Type
- journal article
- Language
- en
- Open access
- closed
About these checks
Registry, retraction, Cites and statistics results are computed, not judged, with one exception: a printed reference that no index lists is read once by a model before it counts as a citation error. Claims are extracted by a model and kept only when their quote appears verbatim in the text; each cited source is then checked, with a model’s help, for whether it says what the claim relies on. Those verdicts can be wrong — read the claim’s quote and the cited source before relying on one.
Statistics and arithmetic are recomputed, not judged.
Confidence bands are shown only for fields calibrated on our annotated test set. None is calibrated yet, so no band is shown.
What counts as a claim ›How we measure confidence ›How we check this ›
Are you an author, or do you see a problem with this page? Request a review
How to cite
Cite CoChat for the checks on this page, and the paper for its own findings.
- This page
- CoChat. (2026). Citation check: The “Scary World” of the Nonviewer and Other Anomalies: A Reanalysis of Gerbner et al.'s Findings on Cultivation Analysis Part I. https://app.cochat.ai/papers/10.1177/009365028000700401
- The paper
- Hirsch, P. M. (1980). The “Scary World” of the Nonviewer and Other Anomalies: A Reanalysis of Gerbner et al.'s Findings on Cultivation Analysis Part I. Communication Research. https://doi.org/10.1177/009365028000700401
Data sources
Bibliographic data: Semantic Scholar, OpenAlex, Crossref.
Contains information from the Semantic Scholar Academic Graph Datasets, made available under the ODC Attribution License (ODC-BY 1.0).
Semantic Scholar’s data is described in: Kinney, R., et al. (2023). The Semantic Scholar Open Data Platform. arXiv:2301.10140.
