Knowledge Gap Hypothesis - A Formal Summary of The Knowledge Gap Hypothesis

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:

  1. People in a society exhibit great psychological diversity due to their psychological makeup, learned experiences, social relationships, and social category memberships.
  2. 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.
  3. 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.
  4. 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.

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