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Television Viewing and Self‐Perceived Health, Weight, and Physical Fitness: Evidence for the Cultivation Hypothesis 1
Author(s) -
McCreary Donald R.,
Sadava Stanley W.
Publication year - 1999
Publication title -
journal of applied social psychology
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 0.822
H-Index - 111
eISSN - 1559-1816
pISSN - 0021-9029
DOI - 10.1111/j.1559-1816.1999.tb00114.x
Subject(s) - entertainment , psychology , overweight , perception , social psychology , replication (statistics) , advertising , obesity , physical health , medicine , political science , law , business , psychotherapist , virology , neuroscience , mental health
Television (TV) often depicts a version of the world that differs from social reality in several ways. The present study examined the relationship between the amount of TV people watch, how important TV is for their entertainment and information‐gathering purposes, and their perceptions of their health, weight, and physical fitness. Regression analyses showed that, after controlling for their actual level of obesity, health perceptions were negatively related to both the amount of time spent watching TV and TV's perceived importance as an entertainment medium, but for women only. In addition, those who watched a lot of TV tended to see themselves as more overweight than did those who watched less TV. The implications of these findings for the cultivation hypothesis, as well as issues of replication, were discussed.