Social and psychological origins of media use: A lifestyle analysis

Abstract

This study examined how social and psychological factors, Including the need for activation, interact to produce different lifestyles and patterns of media use. The research identified four lifestyle types whose members differed significantly on a broad range of variables, including newspaper and newsmagazine readership, and gratifications sought from cable television. Persons with a high need for activation had lifestyles involving greater exposure to media sources of public affairs information than those with a lower need for activation and less cosmopolitan lifestyles. Results suggest that the roots of media use are far deeper than previously believed.