Watching baywatch in Burundi: An investigation into the relationship between global television viewing and people's feelings of economic deprivation and unhappiness
2009
Thesis (M.P.P.)--Georgetown University, 2009.; Includes bibliographical
references. This report explores the possible effects that television viewing may be having on
the happiness of people worldwide. Specifically, it seeks to better understand if and how
television viewing may cause individuals to develop a diminished assessment of their relative
financial status that could, in turn, reduce their feelings of financial satisfaction and
happiness. In order to explicate these theoretical relationships, this study bridges two
bodies of theory: cultivation theory, which attempts to explain how television can influence
perceptions of wealth, and other research, based primarily on explaining the
"Easterlin Paradox," that seeks to better understand how an individual's
wealth, and their perceptions of that wealth, can effect happiness. When applied to the
empirical data from the World Values Survey, the proposed theoretical models demonstrated that
the positive association between real financial status and financial satisfaction was, in
fact, diminished in moderate to heavy television viewers. Moreover, the results suggest that
the extent to which it was diminished can be attenuated depending upon certain characteristics
of the viewer. A further test on whether television viewing is associated with heightened
levels of materialism produced only inconclusive results. These findings can help policy
makers better understand that television has importance not only as a conduit through which
people around the world get information, but also as a trigger for a psychological process in
which individuals use that information to make important value judgments about their
lives.
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