The soaps: Their sex, gratifications, and outcomes

This review identifies soap viewers, explains their primary motives for vie wing, describes the sexual content of soaps, and reviews studies of viewer responses to soaps. Soap viewers are disproportionately female, ethnic mino rity less educated, and lower income. Primary motives for adolescent viewer s are escapism, habit, social learning, and social excitement, matching tho se found in studies of adults. Soap content focuses heavily on sexual inter course among unmarrieds, and sexual content increased 35% between 1985 and 1994 studies (Greenberg di D'Alessio, 1985; Greenberg & Busselle, 1996). A 1996 study (Heintz-Knowles, 1996) found a large increase in visual sexual a ctivity, although two thirds of the sex on soaps is talked about rattler th an demonstrated Social effects of soaps have been examined primarily within a cultivation paradigm, with viewers expected to make larger estimates of frequent story behaviors, such as adultery, than nonviewers. Studies have y ielded a moderate level of support for this proposition.