George Gerbner conducted a study about the effects of television on the way society perceives itself. Gerbner and his associates found that "the world portrayed on television is grossly misleading as a representation of reality," and "we take what we see on television as a reflection of reality." They also did studies on the beliefs and attitudes of "heavy" television viewers and "light" television viewers. For example, they found that the heavy viewers express more racially prejudiced attitudes. They also concluded that the heavy viewers are more pessimistic about the world, while the light viewers are more happy about life and optimistic.
Political psychologists Shanto Iyengar and Donald Kinder conducted experiments about evening news shows. They varied the contents of evening news shows watched by their research participants and came to the conclusion that whatever news story the participants were exposed to (because they were only exposed to one specific problem facing the United States) they felt more passionately for.
That evening news study helps to support Gerber's research by proving that society is indeed influenced by what they watch on television. It corrects by proving that it might not mean that people watching more television is a bigger influence, but by what exactly they watch.
Television is a great source of information about what is going on in the world, and a great form of entertainment, but it can also have its down-sides by being misleading or showing false "pictures" about the world today. We just have to be careful about what we watch and how we take in these "pictures in our heads" and perceive them.
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