Anti-smoking Ads Research Articles

Third-Person Perception and Children

Results of two studies provide the first evidence of third-person effect among children. In Study 1 (a survey of 571 seventh-grade students), children believed that cigarette advertisements influenced others more than themselves (third-person perception). Moreover, when children compared themselves with peers, the discrepancy between self and others was larger than when children compared themselves with their best friends (social distance corollary). In Study 2, children from Grades 4, 6, and 8 (n = 666) watched a 10-minute video portraying either cigarette or anti-smoking advertisements. Regardless of which video they watched, children believed that cigarette ads have greater influence on others than on themselves. The opposite was true for anti-smoking advertisements, however. Children believed that anti-smoking ads have greater influence on themselves than others (a reverse third-person perception). Children did not perceive uniformly greater impact of persuasive messages on people other than themselves. Instead, children's judgments of media influence were consistently self-serving. These findings corroborate a theory that third-person perception is the product of a superiority bias—the tendency to see ourselves as better, or better off, than others.

The Effects of Antismoking and Cigarette Advertising on Young Adolescents' Perceptions of Peers Who Smoke

Prior research suggests that young adolescents' perceptions of smokers are strongly associated with smoking initiation. Thus, we experimentally investigated the effects of antismoking and cigarette advertising on nonsmoking youths' perceptions (evaluative judgments) of a peer who smokes. Results suggest that exposure to the antismoking ads made salient our seventh-grade subjects' preexisting beliefs that smokers foolishly endanger their health, which resulted in even less favorable evaluations of the smoker's common sense and personal appeal. Further, unlike subjects who saw unrelated (control) ads, those who saw the antismoking ads judged the smoker to be relatively immature and unglamorous. Exposure to the cigarette ads did not significantly affect scale ratings of, but resulted in more favorable thoughts about, the smoker.