Fictional Narratives Cultivate Just-World Beliefs

Abstract

Cultivation research has identified several misrepresentations on television and has shown that the more people watch television, the more their beliefs correspond to the television world. In recent years, experimental research has demonstrated that fictional narratives are powerful means to change audience beliefs. Theories on the narrative structure of fictional narratives and disposition-based theories of media enjoyment suggest that televised fictional narratives tend to portray the world as a just place. We propose that the amount of fiction watched on television predicts the belief in a just world (BJW). Further, we assume this effect to be compatible with the television use/meanworld relationship expressed by cultivation theory. Two cross-sectional studies with N = 128 participants (German sample) and N = 387 (Austrian sample) corroborate our assumptions. The self-reported frequency of watching fiction on television was positively related to the BJW, whereas the general amount of television viewing was positively related to mean- and scary-world beliefs. In the German sample, mean-world beliefs were also affected by viewing tabloid-style (infotainment) television news. doi:10.1111/j.1460-2466.2007.00374.x The relationship between the reality depicted by the media and the worldviews held by the audience is a fundamental question of mass communication research. Starting from cultivation theory, we posit that watching fictional narratives on television goes along with an increased belief in a just world (BJW), whereas general television use and watching infotainment nonfiction are related to the belief in a mean world. After introducing relevant theory and research, we present two cross-sectional studies that corroborate our assumptions. Cultivation of beliefs Cultivation theory assumes that the ‘‘television world’’ differs from our daily experiences, which leads heavy viewers to believe in the television world rather than real-world statistics. Most prominently, the more people watch television, the more they overestimate crime-related incidents and believe in a mean and scary world