Decades ago, social scientists documented that what we see on television affects our worldview. One study done at the Annenberg School of Communications found that heavy TV viewers tended to overestimate their likelihood of being involved in a violent crime compared to light TV viewers. The reason was simple: they saw lots of violence on television and unconsciously assumed that is how the world was.

They now are finding that heavy TV viewing affects political attitudes. That is the conclusion of a study done by the Culture and Media Institute. They have published a National Cultural Values Survey which provides a major overview of the cultural and moral values of Americans. It won’t surprise you to find out that most Americans believe that the media are harming the nation’s moral values.

One part that I found most interesting is the finding that the media are undermining America’s sense of personal responsibility. They found the more a person watches television the less likely he or she is to accept responsibility.

For example, they found that 64 percent of heavy TV viewers believe government should provide retirement benefits to Americans while only 43 percent of light viewers thought this. By the way, a heavy TV viewer is someone who watches four hours or more of television every day. They also found that 63 percent of heavy TV viewers prefer government health care to private health care. This is compared to only 43 percent of light viewers.

Television viewing also had an impact on volunteering time and giving money. They found that 56 percent of heavy TV viewers did not volunteer time to worthy causes last year, compared to 22 percent of light TV viewers. They also found that 24 percent of heavy TV viewers made no charitable contributions last year, compared to 11 percent of light TV viewers.

Obviously these are only correlations and do not prove causation. But you do have to wonder. On the surface, it appears that watching lots of TV affects both attitudes and behavior.