Third-person Perception Research Articles

Social media metrics: Third-person perceptions of health information

The present study investigated the role of social media metrics (i.e., number of shares and comments) displayed alongside online news stories in shaping users’ perceptions of the content and its influence. In a web-based experiment (N=144), participants first read a cancer news story that displayed either a high or a low level of social media metrics, then reported their perceived story influence on the self and others, as well as their behavioral intentions. In the low social media metrics condition, the general story influence was perceived to be stronger for others than for the self, indicative of the “third-person effect.” This effect, however, was diminished to insignificant levels in the high social media metrics condition. Further, social media metrics had an ultimate indirect effect on behavioral intentions via the third-person effect. Theoretical and practical implications of these findings are provided in the end.

The Adaptive Characteristics of Introversion: Third-Person Perception and the Role of Self-Acceptance

The Adaptive Characteristics of Introversion: Third-Person Perception and the Role of Self-Acceptance

Political Advertising on Social Media in the 2012 Presidential Election

This study explores the perceived effects of political ads that appeared on social media in the 2012 presidential campaign from a third-person effect perspective. Results of a survey using a probability sample of 496 college students indicated that the respondents tend to believe that political ads on social media have a greater influence on others than on themselves. However, the more desirable they viewed such ads, the more they admitted the ads to having influenced themselves. Finally, third-person perception of political ads on social media was found to be a positive predictor of engagement in promotional social media behavior after the influences of demographics, social media use, and political attitudes were taken into consideration.

Third-Person Effects of Internet Stock Recommendations

In this study we empirically tested the effects of the use of third-person perceptions in the context of the stock market using a sample of 109 professional stock traders and 130 members of the lay public. Findings show that people perceived anonymous information recommending stocks on the Internet as having a greater influence on others than on themselves. Additionally, participants demonstrated a third-person perception when “others” were novice investors with little knowledge or experience in stock trading than when “others” were presumed to be experienced investors. Professional stock traders perceived a greater influence on others than did the lay public. We also found support for the relationship between third-person perceptions and attitudes toward support for warnings about anonymous information.

I Know You Are, but What Am I? Adolescents’ Third-Person Perception Regarding Dating Violence

ABSTRACT A survey of adolescents (N = 1,646) documented third-person perception regarding media depictions of dating/relationship violence. It also contributes to the growing literature documenting optimistic bias as a strong predictor of third-person perception and draws from the optimistic bias literature considering new variables including self-esteem, self-efficacy, and experience with violence.

Preexisting Factors or Media Effect? Understanding the Third-Person Perception

Research on third-person perceptions has consistently yielded evidence of a perceptual gap in perceived media effects on self and others. Scholars have worked to understand the reasons behind this gap with mixed results. In this study, we consider how news story characteristics, such as depictions of who is affected and how they are affected, could have implications for individual assessments of the effects of video games on self and others. We further contextualize this experiment by considering the role of more stable beliefs such as maternalism, paternalism, and assessments of media vulnerability. Results indicate that more permanent factors superseded the effects of the news story manipulations. Ultimately, the data show limited influence of media coverage on effects perceptions and suggest that such person perceptions are driven more by long-standing beliefs.

National identity building through patterns of an international third-person perception in news coverage

This article argues that news coverage plays an important role for national identity building in the way that it evaluates the own nation better than foreign nations (in-group/out-group bias). This notion is being transferred to the media as an element of national cultural identity. This article identifies analogies between national identity building through the mass media and the third-person perception, which states that people assume others to be more vulnerable to negative media influences. It is hypothesized that patterns of an international third-person perception occur in news coverage, i.e. the news media should present media influences in the own country to be weaker than in other countries. A first standardized content analysis ( N = 2204) of newspaper coverage from the US and Germany on elections in own and other countries supports this hypothesis. Consequences are discussed and directions for future research are pointed out.

Measuring Differentials in Communication Research: Issues With Multicollinearity in Three Methods

Models of communication processes sometimes require the computation of the difference between two variables. For example, information insufficiency is the difference between what people know and what they think they need to know about an issue, and it can motivate information seeking and processing. Common methods that compute this differential may bias model estimates as a function of the correlation between the differentiated variables and other variables in the model. This article describes the general form of Cohen and Cohen's (1983) analysis of partial variance for computing differentials and analyzes simulated data to contrast that method with two alternative methods. The discussion recommends the use of the general form of the Cohen and Cohen method in other areas of communication research, such as studies of third-person perception.

“They Will Help, So I Don't Need To?” Behavioral Hypothesis of the Third-Person Effect in Donation Aid Advertising

This study presents a structural equation model of third-person hypotheses in the context of Hurricane Katrina donation advertising. Since donation aid advertising has both prosocial and persuasive characteristics, people's precedent perceptions were expected to influence their third-person perceptions, which would in turn influence their donation intentions. Results supported the expectations. Specifically, this study found a significant negative relationship between third-person perceptions and donation intentions. That is, people who estimated greater influence on others than on themselves tended to have fewer intentions to donate to the hurricane recovery. Theoretical and practical implications of these findings are discussed.

Social categorization and cross-cultural exploration of the third-person effect: Perceived impact of North Korea's nuclear test on the self and comparison targets

This experimental study explored the perceived media impact of North Korea's nuclear test on South Koreans and Americans to investigate whether a social categorization moderator affects a tendency to think that others will be more affected by the media. The results showed that the third-person perception was not found among South Koreans when in-group and out-group members were compared. We discussed how cultural factors might play a role in the third-person perception between two cultures: collectivistic culture (South Korea) and individualistic culture (America).

As seen on TV! Third-person perception in the ER

As seen on TV! Third-person perception in the ER

Examining sexting's effect among adolescent mobile phone users

Sexting among teen mobile phone users is on the rise. This study examines adolescent mobile phone users' perceptions of the harmful effect of consensual sexting between two people in a romantic relationship, mass-circulated sexting, and sexting posted on the internet. Results of a survey of 236 US adolescents showed that respondents believed sexting to have a greater harm on others than on themselves. Furthermore, the respondents perceived sexting messages posted to the internet as more harmful than mass-circulated sexting, which in turn were more harmful than consensual sexting between two people. Additionally, we found a gendered effect of the third-person perception of sexting - both males and females believed other females were more harmed by sexting. This perception of girls, not boys, as the victims of sexting predicts willingness to support restrictions on sexting. On the other hand, the more respondents sexted, the less willing they were to support such restrictions.

Political Advertising on Social Media in the 2012 Presidential Election

This study explores the perceived effects of political ads that appeared on social media in the 2012 presidential campaign from a third-person effect perspective. Results of a survey using a probability sample of 496 college students indicated that the respondents tend to believe that political ads on social media have a greater influence on others than on themselves. However, the more desirable they viewed such ads, the more they admitted the ads to having influenced themselves. Finally, third-person perception of political ads on social media was found to be a positive predictor of engagement in promotional social media behavior after the influences of demographics, social media use, and political attitudes were taken into consideration.

A Social Comparison Explanation for the Third-Person Perception

This study proposes the third-person perception (TPP) can be viewed as a type of comparative social judgment in the domain of media influence, in that it is a function of assimilation, contrast, and anchoring mechanisms in the process of social comparison. The derived hypotheses were tested with web-based experimental data ( N = 511). Results showed some evidence that TPP was a function of assimilation and contrast effects. There was also evidence that there were anchoring effects, and such effects tended to emerge when self was the anchor. Implication and directions for future research on TPP were discussed.

A Study of the Impact and Relationship of Three Variables on the Third-Person Perception: Estimate of Media Coverage Patterns, Respondent’s Pros and Cons, Perceived Public Opinion of the Jeonju-Wanju Integration Issue

A Study of the Impact and Relationship of Three Variables on the Third-Person Perception: Estimate of Media Coverage Patterns, Respondent’s Pros and Cons, Perceived Public Opinion of the Jeonju-Wanju Integration Issue

Perceived Hostile Media Bias, Presumed Media Influence, and Opinions About Immigrants and Immigration

This study explores hostile media bias and third-person perceptions of the influence of media coverage of immigrants using data (N = 529) from North Carolina, where the Latino population grew almost 400% in two decades. As hypothesized, anti-immigrant sentiment was significantly related to perceptions of “hostile” (pro-immigrant) news coverage. However, anti-immigrant sentiment was not directly related to belief in coverage effects on others. Analysis revealed two “paths” for relationships among anti-immigrant sentiment, exposure and attention to media coverage, perceived media bias, and presumed media influence or third-person perceptions.

Finding Primary Publics: A Test of the Third-Person Perception in Corporate Crisis Situations

Exaggerated projections of the 3rd-person effect of crisis news on target groups may play a key role in escalating corporate crises. A 2 (locus of control: internal vs. external) × 2 (product category of crisis: food vs. laptop) experiment found that the 3rd-person perception varies as a function of product category. Our results indicated that in a laptop product category crisis, participants perceived target audiences to be more influenced than themselves when locus of control was internal rather than when it was external. This study delved into the potential effect on target groups and the corporation resulting from possible exaggerated perceptions of the impact of the crisis on the target groups. This perception may prompt or even pressure target audiences to react more strongly in keeping with the perceived impact, not their actual concern with the crisis. In turn, corporations may respond to a target audience based on the reaction the target audience feels obligated to portray in response to perceived impact, not actual impact measured independently in various ways.

The Role of Exemplification in Shaping Third-Person Perceptions and Support for Restrictions on Video Games

The origins of third-person perceptions remain uncertain, with most research focusing on psychological mechanisms. We investigate whether media content might also play a role, using a 2 × 2 experiment presenting a single story describing video games as harmful or harmless and using either research and statistics or a specific anecdotal exemplar to illustrate this claim. Results show perceived effects on others are influenced by the use of an exemplar but do not show an effect for explicitly describing games as harmful. The findings suggest that media may influence third-person perceptions and subsequent support for censorship in previously unexplored ways.

Examining Third-Person Perceptions in the Context of Sexually Oriented Advertising

A limited amount of research has been undertaken to investigate third-person perceptions as persuasion in the context of sexually oriented advertising. This study examined whether sexually oriented advertising and gender differences would yield significant influences on third-person perceptions and whether participants’ sexual cognition would moderate their third-person perceptions. Results showed that sexually oriented advertising, gender differences, and sexual cognition were significant factors that dominated the third-person perceptions. After exposure to sexually oriented advertising, females were led to a stronger degree of the third-person perceptions than males. Moreover, the participants with a more negative level of sexual cognition had a stronger degree of the third-person perceptions than those with a more positive level of sexual cognition after exposure to sexually oriented advertising.

Exploring Gun Ownership as a Social Identity to Understanding the Perceived Media Influence of the Virginia Tech News Coverage on Attitudes toward Gun Control Policy

This study examines the perceived effects of the Virginia Tech shooting news coverage on self and others’ attitudes toward gun control policy and the moderating role of gun ownership. One hundred sixty-four respondents completed an online survey. Larger, third-person perceptions (TPPs) were reported for those who owned guns due to the reduction of the perceived effect on self. Exposure to gun-related news was associated with perceived effect on self, but only for non-gun owners. Results are discussed in light of TPP and intergroup research.