Short CommunicationsWho smokes in hollywood? characteristics of smokers in popular films from 1940 to 1989
Section snippets
Selection of target films
We sampled films from among the 20 top-grossing films for each year from 1940–1989. Twenty films from each of the 5 decades were randomly selected.
Rating procedure
At least three trained raters rated each film. They were instructed to rate all characters that appeared in what the rater considered to be a significant number of scenes. Characters were rated on the following dimensions:
- 1.
Smoking: If at any point in the film a character smoked a cigarette or cigar, raters indicated that the character was a smoker.
Reliability of ratings
Reliability was assessed by randomly selecting 15 films from our sample. We then entered the ratings of the first three raters for these films as variables and calculated coefficient alphas. Reliabilities across raters were well above acceptable levels across all dimensions rated, ranging from a low of .74 (for intelligence) to a high of .94 (for tobacco use).
Frequency of smoking
Overall, 21% of the characters rated smoked at least once during the film. There is a general decline in the number of characters who
Depiction of smokers versus nonsmokers
Based on the ratings of 832 characters appearing in 100 popular films, we found that smokers are depicted as more romantically and sexually active than nonsmokers and as marginally more intelligent than nonsmokers. Otherwise, there is little to distinguish smokers from nonsmokers in films. This pattern of results might be summarized by suggesting that, if anything, smokers are depicted a bit more positively than nonsmokers. There is no evidence of smoking being linked with any negative
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