More than a few researchers have pondered the cognitive “mechanics” of the cultivation process. In this chapter we take a close look at some of the many psychological models that have been offered in order to pinpoint how cultivation takes place within the “black box” of the individual viewer.

The “black box” refers to whatever unobservable cognitive processes underlie the absorption and integration of information (facts, values, assumptions, images, beliefs and so on) from television that results in cultivation. Many different arguments have been proposed about what these processes might be and how they might operate, and the question still excites a good deal of curiosity, speculation and empirical effort. Though no firm or definitive answers have been reached, there is progress being made on this question, as we report in this chapter.

Despite the amount of research activity in this area, cognitive problems have tended to receive short shrift from many of those engaged in cultivation studies. After all, Gerbner et al. did not mean for cultivation to concentrate on the psychology of individuals, nor did they envision a cognitively minded research endeavor; they were focused on macro-social phenomena, and cultivation certainly continues to be best seen as a broad-based attempt to explain the impacts of communication institutions and their outputs on large communities. The theory was conceived, as we have pointed out earlier, to examine “the bucket, not the drops” of television's contribution to the culture.