A Formal Summary of The Knowledge Gap Hypothesis
Given the preceding information, the knowledge gap hypothesis can be expressed using the following set of related propositions:
- People in a society exhibit great psychological diversity due to their psychological makeup, learned experiences, social relationships, and social category memberships.
- Despite these differences, people with more education tend to have better developed cognitive and communication skills, broader social spheres with more and more diverse social contacts, and a greater amount of stored information than their counterparts with less education.
- People with greater education also tend express interest in, and expose themselves to, a broader range of topics, including serious topics like public affairs, science, and health news.
- Therefore, as the infusion of mass media information into a social system increases, segments of the population with higher socioeconomic status tend to acquire this information at a faster rate than the lower status segments so that the gap in knowledge between these segments tends to increase rather than decrease.
Read more about this topic: Knowledge Gap Hypothesis
Famous quotes containing the words formal, summary, knowledge, gap and/or hypothesis:
“The spiritual kinship between Lincoln and Whitman was founded upon their Americanism, their essential Westernism. Whitman had grown up without much formal education; Lincoln had scarcely any education. One had become the notable poet of the day; one the orator of the Gettsyburg Address. It was inevitable that Whitman as a poet should turn with a feeling of kinship to Lincoln, and even without any association or contact feel that Lincoln was his.”
—Edgar Lee Masters (1869–1950)
“Product of a myriad various minds and contending tongues, compact of obscure and minute association, a language has its own abundant and often recondite laws, in the habitual and summary recognition of which scholarship consists.”
—Walter Pater (1839–1894)
“The world still wants its poet-priest, a reconciler, who shall not trifle with Shakspeare the player, nor shall grope in graves with Swedenborg the mourner; but who shall see, speak, and act, with equal inspiration. For knowledge will brighten the sunshine; right is more beautiful than private affection; and love is compatible with universal wisdom.”
—Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803–1882)
“The great enemy of clear language is insincerity. When there is a gap between one’s real and one’s declared aims, one turns as it were instinctively to long words and exhausted idioms, like a cuttlefish squirting out ink.”
—George Orwell (1903–1950)
“The great tragedy of science—the slaying of a beautiful hypothesis by an ugly fact.”
—Thomas Henry Huxley (1825–95)