Social and Behavioral Sciences Commons^™

Cultivation Effects From Television Crime Dramas To Forensic Practices, Stephanie P. Mobley

Honors Theses

Television and its effects have been frequently studied due to the prevalence of television in today’s society. Cultivation theory examines these effects by claiming that people’s perceptions of the real world are shaped by the social reality portrayed on television. This paper used this theory to examine a link between college student’s viewership of television crime dramas and their opinions about forensic practices. It used quantitative survey questions and previous research to come to conclusions for the research questions. The three research questions asked whether frequent viewing of crime dramas cultivated false beliefs about three forensic practices, (fingerprint analysis, polygraph …