The Third-Person Effect

Chapter 18

The Third-Person Effect
RICHARD M. PERLOFF Cleveland State University
What effect do the media have on you? Does news change your mind about issues? Do commercials sway you? Does television violence make you more aggressive? Not really, you say. You make up your own mind, form your own ideas about politics and products, and you’re not much fazed by TV crime shows, though goodness knows, you’ve watched your share of them over the years. Okay—Do me this favor, estimate the impact that news, commercials, and television violence have on other people. That is, guess how they influence other individuals who tune them in. Say what? You think that news, advertising, and TV violence have a strong effect on other people? That others buy into what they see on the tube? Do we have a problem, Houston? Is there an inconsistency here? According to the third-person effect hypothesis, there is. If you are right that other people are influenced by media, then it certainly stands to reason that you too should be affected. On the other hand, if you are correct that you’re not affected and everyone else presumably claims the same lack of media influence, then you exaggerate the impact of media on others. “In either case,” as James Tiedge and his colleagues (1991) note, “most people appear to be willing to subscribe to the logical inconsistency inherent in maintaining that the mass media influence others considerably more than themselves” (Tiedge, Silverblatt, Havice, & Rosenfeld, p. 152).1 Welcome to the domain of the third-person effect—a complex, labyrinthlike area in which perceptions become reality, reality is enshrouded by perceptions, and perceptions hinge on the very important factor of whether you are considering the media’s impact on other people or on yourself. As uses and gratifications did in the 1970s, the thirdperson effect hypothesis turns conventional media effects theorizing on its head. Instead of looking at media effects on beliefs, it examines beliefs
1 On the individual level of analysis, it is theoretically possible for an individual (e.g., a prescient person from a foreign land) to correctly assert that a particular media message will have a strong effect on native citizens, but not on himself. The problem occurs on the aggregate level, where large numbers of people engage in the self-other discrepancy; it is on this level of analysis that third-person effects are more difficult to defend on logical grounds.

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about media effects. Rather than assuming that media affect perceptions, it assumes that perceptions can shape media. For this reason, the third-person effect (TPE) has generated substantial research interest in recent years—approximately 100 journal articles and convention papers and in 1998 a CBS News poll that probed whether respondents believed that other people were more interested in news reports of President Clinton’s sex life than they were. Only 7% of respondents indicated that they were fascinated by news stories on Clinton’s sex life; 37% confessed they were mildly curious; and 50% claimed that they were not interested at all. Yet when asked to judge most people’s interest in the stories, respondents reacted much differently. Twenty-five percent of the same sample said most people were fascinated, 49% claimed most people were mildly curious, and only 18% believed that most people harbored no interest at all (Berke, 1998). The third-person effect is a relatively new concept, as social science constructs go. It was invented in 1983 by sociologist W. Phillips Davison in a clever article that drew on intuition and public opinion theory. The third-person effect is an individual’s perception that a message will exert a stronger impact on others than on the self. The “third-person” term derives from the expectation that a message will not have its greatest influence on “me” (the grammatical first person), or “you” (the second person), but on “them”—the third persons. Individuals may overestimate the impact that mass media exert on others, underestimate media effects on the self, or both. The TPE hypothesis has two parts. The perceptual hypothesis asserts that people assume that communications influence others more than the self. The behavioral component suggests that people’s expectations of media impact on others leads them to take action, perhaps because they want to thwart the predicted effects. There is intuitive appeal to the thirdperson effect. It resonates with everyday experience in which people attribute powerful, typically negative, effects to “the media” (frequently pronounced as one word and thought to be a singular entity). At the same time, people deny that the media have affected them personally or have difficulty locating a single instance in which the same mass media have altered their ways of seeing the world. The behavioral component of the hypothesis comports with a flurry of contemporary events, such as activists’ concerns about the effects of controversial movies (The Siege’s portrayal of Muslim terrorists), provocative art (a Brooklyn museum portrait of the Virgin Mary adorned with elephant dung), and rap music (hip-hopper Eminem’s hate-filled lyrics). Convinced that such art will profoundly influence third persons, partisans have sought to restrict access to the messages. This raises a question. Is the third-person effect a new phenomenon, coming into its own in the age of mass media and taking new form with

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the development of interactive media? Or does it date back thousands of years to ancient Greece, when Socrates was accused of corrupting the youth of Athens through his creative use of the spoken word (de Botton, 2000)? Can one not see glimmerings of the effect in Plato’s fear that great harm would be caused by the “ascendency of the written word over the spoken word” (Starker, 1989, p. 7)? Do third-person effects lurk behind 19thcentury critics’ fears that reading novels will occasion “the entire destruction of the powers of the mind” (Starker, p. 8) and that all manner of media—newspapers, movies, television violence, and Internet pornography—will have harmful effects on a vulnerable public that somehow excludes the perceiver (Baughman, 1989; Wartella & Reeves, 1985)? Although third-person biases undoubtedly operated throughout human history, they are of greater consequence today than in the pre–mass society era. When people’s experiences of the world were limited by the contours of their communities and their life-space was restricted to the little towns in which they grew up, there was no possibility for opinions to spiral out and influence the world at large. Life is different today. Public opinion exerts a significant impact on political and social behavior and affects mass and elite decisions. Consequently, perceptions of public opinion can have direct and indirect, “ripple” effects, particularly when these perceptions are widely reported in the mass media (Mutz, 1998). Although the third-person effect is more hypothesis than full-blown theory, it has roots firmly planted in venerable communication concepts and respected research traditions. It is one of a family of concepts that bridges sociology and psychology, focuses on perceptions of social reality, and centers on beliefs about public opinion (Glynn, Ostman, & McDonald, 1995). Like such constructs as pluralistic ignorance, it emphasizes that people harbor illusions—mistaken beliefs about others’ opinions. Yet it contrasts sharply with such concepts as looking-glass perception (Fields & Schuman, 1976) or its psychological counterpart, false consensus. According to looking-glass self or false consensus, people perceive that others share their views of the world. The third-person effect view is different. It claims that people are prone to assume that media have different—invariably stronger—influences on others than on themselves. On a psychological level, the third-person effect links up with the social psychology of risk, particularly the tendency to separate out judgments of risk for oneself and society at large (Tyler & Cook, 1984). The most direct linkage is with theories of unrealistic optimism (Weinstein, 1980) and selfserving biases, notably people’s self-serving tendency to assume that they are better than average (Alicke, Klotz, Breitenbecher, Yurak, & Vredenburg, 1995) and less susceptible to personal harm than everyone else. Theorists argue that optimistic biases help people maintain a sense of control

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over unpredictable life events, but critics worry that illusions of invulnerability can lead to “maladaptive complacency” regarding health (and perhaps media?) risks (Smith, Gerrard, & Gibbons, 1997, p. 144). The centerpiece of the third-person effect is perception and the implicit assumption that perceptions are not fixed at some final Archimedean point, but vary as a function of the gaze of the perceiver (toward others or self). Decidedly Western in its bifurcation of the subject (self) and the object (the world outside), the third-person effect hypothesis distinctively departs from other related public opinion concepts in its emphasis on the message or more precisely, the perceived effects of the message.

RESEARCH FINDINGS The third-person effect has been studied in a variety of ways, but typically survey respondents are asked to estimate effects of researcher-described messages on others and self. In some cases, people read or view a communication; subsequently, they indicate their beliefs about the message’s impact on third persons and themselves. Wording and question order vary with the study, a point to be discussed later in this chapter. In any case, when one reviews the research, it becomes abundantly clear that third-person effects have been ripe for the picking, emerging in virtually every published study on the topic. What’s more, third-person effects have occurred in a variety of contexts, spanning news, advertising, health, and entertainment. Consider the following findings: • A national sample of U.S. respondents estimated that the news media had a greater impact on others’ opinions of the 1996 presidential candidates than on their own views (Salwen, 1998). In a study of the third-person effect and press coverage of the O. J. Simpson trial, Salwen and Driscoll (1997) found that survey respondents perceived that news reports exerted a greater influence on others’ opinions about Simpson’s guilt or innocence than on their own. • Third-person perceptions also emerge in the commercial and public service advertising (PSA) domains. Individuals perceived that other people were more influenced than themselves by commercials for household products and by liquor and beer ads (Gunther & Thorson, 1992; Shah, Faber, & Youn, 1999). Self-other discrepancies also emerge for televised safer sex PSAs (Chapin, 2000), particularly when the advertisements are of low professional quality (Duck, Terry, & Hogg, 1995). Even children exhibit third-person perceptions. Elementary and middle school students perceived that cigarette ads have a significantly greater impact on others than on themselves (Henriksen & Flora, 1999).

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• Extending the perceptual hypothesis to entertainment media, Gunther (1995) found that over 60% of U.S. adults believe that others are more negatively influenced by pornography than themselves. Similar findings emerged for antisocial rap music lyrics and television violence (McLeod, Eveland, & Nathanson, 1997; Salwen & Dupagne, 1999). In addition, female college students who viewed horror movie segments (e.g., Friday the 13th, Part III) estimated the fright responses of other females to be significantly higher than their own (Mundorf, Weaver, & Zillmann, 1989). • Extrapolating the third-person effect from perceived media effects to perceptions of media uses, Peiser and Peter (2000) reported that German adults believe others are more likely than they are to gravitate to undesirable television viewing behaviors, such as escape and habit. By contrast, respondents perceived that they were more inclined to desirable TV viewing behaviors, like information seeking. Even stronger support for the pervasiveness of the third-person effect is provided by a meta-analysis of 32 published and unpublished studies of the perceptual hypothesis. Using meta-analytic techniques to determine the strength of the perceptual effect, Paul, Salwen, and Dupagne (2000) found substantial support for the third-person perception. The effect size, or magnitude of difference between estimated media effects on self and others, was r .50, considerably larger than that reported for the effect of TV violence on antisocial behavior (r .31) and pornography on aggression (r .13; cf. Paul et al., 2000).

WHY THEE (AND THEM) MORE THAN ME? At the heart of every political philosophy is an appraisal of human nature (Oreskes, 2000). The same is true of social scientific theories. What makes the TPE hypothesis intriguing is that explanatory mechanisms stake out different appraisals of human motivation and cognition. The prevailing interpretation is that the third-person effect is a subset of a universal human tendency to perceive the self in ways that make us look good or at least better than other people. Admitting that one has been influenced by media may be tantamount to acknowledging gullibility or that one possesses socially undesirable traits. By assuming the self is invulnerable to communication effects while others are naively susceptible, individuals preserve a positive sense of self and reaffirm their belief that they are superior to others. A second interpretation is that people are motivated by a need to control unpredictable life events. If we believed that every media program or

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stimulus had strong effects on us, we’d be basket cases. By assuming that the self is not influenced by mass media, individuals can go about their days in a media-dominated world, using media, deriving gratifications, and sensibly integrating media into their lives. A third, related, explanation invokes projection, a psychodynamic process. According to this view, people are actually influenced by media, but cannot consciously acknowledge media influence. Admitting to media effects would threaten individuals’ valued sense of self or reduce their perception of control over external events. As a result, people project media effects onto others, perhaps to defensively distance themselves from undesirable components of self that they would rather not acknowledge (Schimel, Greenberg, Pyszczynski, O’Mahen, & Arndt, 2000).2 Other interpretations of the third-person effect emphasize cognitive, rather than motivational, mechanisms. An attributional approach assumes that people attribute their own actions to situational factors, but believe that others’ behavior is governed by personality dispositions. Applying this to the third-person effect, Gunther (1991) suggested that when estimating media effects on themselves, people take into account the role played by external factors like persuasive intent. But when judging message effects on third persons, observers assume that others’ dispositional shortcomings (e.g., gullibility) render them incapable of factoring in situational factors like persuasive intent. This logically leads observers to the conclusion that others will yield to messages that they see through (Lasorsa, 1992). A fifth interpretation, also cognitively based, emphasizes media schemas. According to this view, people possess simple schemas of media effects—the time-honored hypodermic needle model, coupled with a “passive sheep” view of audience behavior. When asked to estimate media effects, respondents activate these beliefs and apply them to survey questions.
2 The projection interpretation leads some observers to conclude that the third-person effect is a trivial phenomenon, one that obviously follows from people’s tendency to project negative effects onto others. There are several problems with this view. Problems include the following: (a) there is little evidence to suggest that projection is the only explanation for the third-person effect; (b) projection is notoriously difficult to prove, given its neo-Freudian orientation; (c) projection emphasizes that people underestimate communication effects on themselves, thereby understating the theoretically interesting flip side (people overestimate effects on others); (d) whatever the explanation (and even if projection), the self-other disparity emphasized by the third-person effect sheds light on the complexity of social perception and public opinion; (e) the third-person effect offers a distinctive, receiver-focused approach to media effects; (f) even if people merely project effects onto others, these effects can have important effects on behaviors ranging from censorship to decisions leaders make based on inferences about media effects; and (g) third-person perceptions offer clues for how to design persuasive messages that overcome illusions of vulnerability, thereby building theory and helping solve practical problems.

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A sixth view, focusing on why individuals do not acknowledge media effects on themselves, notes that people lack access to their own mental processes (Nisbett & Wilson, 1977) or do not have detailed episodic memory for previous behavior (Schwarz, 1999). If people employ audience prototypes to estimate media effects on others (Explanation 5) and engage in automatic thinking when it comes to their own media behavior (Interpretation 6), it is easy to understand why they might assume that others are more affected by mass communications than they are themselves. Pluralists will say that all explanations are true, and they may be right. At present, though, self-enhancement has the most evidence in its behalf. Some scholars have gone so far as to argue that the third-person effect is a subset of the human tendency to perceive oneself in a favorable light (Peiser & Peter, 2000). However, self-enhancement cannot explain all the variance in third-person perceptions (Paul et al., 2000; Perloff, 1999), which suggests we should remain open to diverse explanations.

WHAT CONDITIONS INFLUENCE THE STRENGTH OF THE TPE? Early research on the third-person effect suggested that it was a universal phenomenon, one that emerged every time individuals were asked to estimate media effects on others and the self. With more research and inevitable dampening of panglossian perceptions has come the realization that, like most things in science, the effect is more likely to occur under particular conditions. Indeed, a careful look at third-person research reveals that some respondents are more prone to third-person perceptions than others; for some messages, people do not discriminate between self and others; and for still other communications, people are prone to do something that might bedevil Davison himself: they acknowledge they are susceptible to media effects. What are the major factors that delimit third-person perceptions? The next sections address this question. Desirability of the Message Self-enhancement theories tell us that people should be loathe to admit that they are influenced by messages when such admission reflects negatively on the self. Third-person effects should be particularly pronounced when the message is perceived as undesirable—that is, when people infer that “this message may not be so good for me” or “it’s not cool to admit you’re influenced by this media program.” In line with these predictions, research finds that people perceive content that is typically thought to be antisocial to have a larger impact on others than on themselves (e.g., television violence, pornography, antisocial rap; see Perloff, 1999).

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The flip side to these findings is more interesting. According to a selfenhancement view, if the third-person effect is driven by a desire to preserve self-esteem, people should be willing to acknowledge effects for communications that are regarded as socially desirable, healthy, or otherwise good for the self. “Being influenced by such messages,” Hoorens and Ruiter (1996) note, “may indeed be seen as an indicator of highly valued characteristics such as openness to innovation, flexibility, or humanity, or of particularly good luck” (p. 601). Research substantiates these predictions. People say they are more influenced than others by advertisements with positive emotional content, but not by neutral ads (Gunther & Thorson, 1992). They acknowledge greater personal influence for a persuasive message with strong, but not weak, arguments (White, 1997). When AIDS prevention ads are of high professional quality, students estimate they will be influenced more than others, but revert to a third-person effect for ads of low quality (Duck, Terry, & Hogg, 1995). Children believe that cigarette ads have greater influence on others than themselves, but perceive that antismoking PSAs have a greater impact on the self than others (Henriksen & Flora, 1999). Useful as the construct is, message desirability is multifaceted and ambiguous, encompassing perceived message benefits to self, impression management concerns, and perceived congruence with existing attitudes. Conceptual clarifications are sorely needed. Nonetheless, research in this area has usefully revised the conventional wisdom by pinpointing conditions under which first-person effects are obtained. One additional note: The horrific bombings of the World Trade Center and Pentagon force us (one wishes it were otherwise) to look at message desirability in light of perceptions of media coverage of these events. One suspects that Americans were probably more than willing to acknowledge that mass media affected them in myriad emotional ways, after nonstop television coverage of the events. Many Americans might have been proud to say that media coverage made them feel particularly sad or moved. For the present purposes, such coverage falls under the category of a socially desirable message, and probable first-person effects follow from research on this concept. Social Distance Up to this point, I have implicitly treated the “third persons” in the thirdperson effect as a singular whole, making no effort to break the term down into smaller parts. But this oversimplifies matters. The magnitude of the third-person effect hinges on the particular others that observers have in mind when they estimate media effects. This is the heart of the social dis-

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tance corollary, the notion that self-other disparities grow in magnitude with increases in perceived distance between self and comparison others. Consistent with this notion, Cohen, Mutz, Price, and Gunther (1988) reported larger perceived effects on others as the “other” increased in generality from “other Stanford students” to “other Californians” to “public opinion at large.” Nearly all of the studies that have tested the social distance corollary have confirmed it. Apparently, the greater the perceived distance between self and others, the easier it is to assume that others will fall prey to effects that “I” see through. It is easier to assume that the mass, faceless audience will be susceptible to media effects than individuated others, who readily conjure up identities in observers’ minds. A number of explanations for social distance findings have been advanced, including an assumption that distant others are part of a negatively valued peer group, prototypical beliefs about distant others’ susceptibility to persuasion, and perception that distant others have more exposure to mass media messages (Eveland, Nathanson, Detenber, & McLeod, 1999; Perloff, 1999). Adding an even more subjective tinge to the third-person effect, social distance research suggests that the ways in which perceivers construct the audience influences the magnitude of selfother disparities. Individual and Group Differences One of the perennial questions in third-person research is whether the effect is more likely to emerge among highly educated people. Educated people, the argument goes, are predisposed to see themselves as mentally superior to others and therefore should perceive that they are more resistant to persuasive communications. Consistent with this argument, Paul et al.’s (2000) meta-analysis found that the third-person perception is significantly larger in college student samples than in random and nonstudent samples. (On the other hand, it could be that college students simply are more apt to catch onto the research hypothesis and parrot back thirdperson findings à la demand characteristics.) More generally, education has a mixed record in predicting third-person effects, and in any event does not provide an explanatory mechanism for whatever effects are found. For this reason, researchers have argued that psychological processes may be more crucial than exogenous factors like education in explaining third-person effects. Consistent with this view, self-perceived knowledge (perceiving that you have expertise on the topic in question) and believing that one is better educated than others handsomely predict the third-person effect (Driscoll & Salwen, 1997; Lasorsa, 1989; Peiser & Peter, 2000; Salwen & Dupagne, 2000). These findings, coupled with evidence that self-esteem

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magnifies third-person perceptions (David & Johnson, 1998), are consistent with the view that self-enhancement underlies the third-person effect. Another individual-level factor that enhances third-person perceptions is ego-involvement, defined as identification with a social group and possession of extreme attitudes on an issue relevant to the group. If you believe the media are biased against your side of a social issue, if you have heard liberals accuse the media of toeing a conservative line, or if you have listened to Republicans charge that the news has a left-liberal bias, you can appreciate the role that ego-involvement plays in the thirdperson effect. People with strong attitudes and group identifications frequently charge that the media intentionally slant stories against their side, a phenomenon that falls under the rubric of hostile media bias (Vallone, Ross, & Lepper, 1985). In studies of news coverage of the Middle East, an area teeming with ego-involved partisans, researchers have found that pro-Israeli and proArab partisans perceive that news is biased against their side (GinerSorolla & Chaiken, 1994; Vallone et al., 1985) and further believe that television news coverage will cause neutral viewers to become more unfavorable toward their side and more favorable toward their antagonists (Perloff, 1989; for related findings, see Driscoll & Salwen, 1997; Duck, Hogg, & Terry, 1995; Price, Tewksbury, & Huang, 1998). Involvement influences perceptions of media effects through several mechanisms, including simplistic lay theories of media impact, assumption that the audience constitutes a political outgroup susceptible to communication effects, prior beliefs about overall media bias that color perceptions of a specific message, and perceived imperviousness of self to influence. In any case, when people are highly involved in an issue, they rush to judgments about media effects that are exaggerated and extreme. These judgments can polarize attitudes, possibly leading to increased fragmentation of social groups and greater intolerance. Summary. The search for individual differences in third-person perceptions has identified self-perceived knowledge, ego-involvement, and selfesteem as potential moderators of the third-person effect. Does this mean that social-structural factors have no bearing on self-other disparities? Is there no sociology or cultural anthropology of third-person perceptions? Empirically, there has been limited evidence that demographic factors such as age and gender influence perceived effects on others or the self (e.g., Salwen & Dupagne, 2000). What’s more, the third-person effect has emerged across different nationality groups (Gunther & Hwa, 1996; Paul et al., 2000), including Asian cultures, which supposedly stress interrelatedness of persons to the social environment. Nonetheless, it seems likely

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that there are subcultural differences in third-person perceptions. Poor people, particularly minorities, are exposed to so many risks that they may have no choice but to acknowledge vulnerability to danger (Mays & Cochran, 1988).

CONSEQUENCES OF THE THIRD-PERSON EFFECT Thus far I have emphasized the perceptual dimension of the third-person effect. But what energizes practitioners and intrigues us all is the behavioral hypothesis, which suggests that perceptions can influence behavior. The hypothesis is vague and terribly simplistic; it ignores the many processes that mediate the perception-behavior relationship. Nonetheless, when you consider recent efforts of (Voldemort) activist groups to ban books like Harry Potter in the United States,3 and government attempts to restrict access to the Internet across the globe (Margolis & Resnick, 2000), you can appreciate the possibility that perceptions of harmful effects on third persons propel people to action. Research finds that the third-person effect predicts support for restricting pornography (Gunther, 1995), television violence (Rojas, Shah, & Faber, 1996; Salwen & Dupagne, 1999), particularly when behavioral (rather than perceptual) effects are considered (Hoffner et al., 1999), as well as antisocial rap music (McLeod et al., 1997) and liquor and gambling advertising (Shah, Faber, & Youn, 1999). However, third-person perceptions are not as likely to forecast support for restricting news, perhaps because (a) news is seen as a more legitimate message, (b) First Amendment beliefs trump paternalistic fears of effects, and (c) effects are seen as less pernicious (e.g., Price, Tewksbury, & Huang, 1998; Salwen & Driscoll, 1997). Note that although the behavioral hypothesis has been tested rigorously, there is ambiguity about the direction of causal impact, and actual censorship behavior has never been tapped. Effects of third-person perceptions on censorship are further complicated by evidence that perceived effects on self, as well as perceived effects on others, forecast support for censorship (Hoffner et al., 1999; Price et al., 1998). As provocative as censorship is, it is not the only likely consequence of third-person perceptions. Scholars have speculated that perceived media effects on others may influence perceptions of public opinion, perhaps inducing agenda-setting, spiral of silence, or social behavioral effects (Mutz & Soss, 1997; Tewksbury, Moy, & Weis, 2000). Such effects may be consequential when they influence elites, as when the media and other elite groups concluded that Ronald Reagan’s skills as a television communicator
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Voldemort is a villain in the Harry Potter books; he tries to kill Harry.

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molded public opinion, an inference that may have led risk-averse journalists to steer clear of criticizing the Gipper, at least until Iran-Contra (Schudson, 1995; see also Schoenbach & Becker, 1995). A more recent application, consistent with Gunther’s (1998) persuasive press inference, occurred shortly after the 2000 presidential election. Conservative talk radio hosts, understandably upset about television networks’ early call that Al Gore had won the state of Florida, argued without evidence that the networks had led thousands of dispirited Bush supporters to decide not to vote for the Texas governor. The talk shows hosts’ pronouncements of media effects on third persons may, in turn, have shaped public opinion by reinforcing the opinion propensities of partisans and offering a perspective that some news media felt obligated to cover. Note that these ripple effects are the result of ideologues’ interpretations of mass media and their efforts to use such interpretations to shape public opinion. Third-person effects do not occur in a vacuum or neutral cocoon. Political elites promote third-person perceptions to advance agendas, adding a perceptual layer to political marketing efforts. This dimension is frequently overlooked, especially by busy citizens who take public actors’ statements of media effects at face value.

IS IT REAL OR ARTIFACT? Third-person effects have emerged with such regularity that it is only natural for skeptics to wonder if the effect is real or in some sense artificial. Have researchers unwittingly encouraged respondents to make thirdperson perceptions by asking biased questions or framing the questions in such a way so as to lead respondents to exaggerate media effects on others? Do the constraints of participating in research subtly push respondents into making judgments they do not ordinarily make? Brosius and Engel (1996), hypothesizing that grammar is everything, argued that participants might be unwilling to acknowledge effects on self simply because the question, “What impact does advertising have on you?” treats the respondent as the object of effects, an acknowledgment that people would rather not make. Reasoning that people might be more willing to acknowledge effects when the phrasing makes the respondent the active subject (“I let myself be influenced by advertising when I go shopping”) than when it refers to the respondent in the typically passive fashion, Brosius and Engel varied the phrasing of questions, only to find that the thirdperson effect emerged regardless of how the question was worded. If question wording does not attenuate the third-person effect, perhaps the order of questions does. Critics have speculated that the practice of asking self-other questions in a back-to-back format encourages individuals to contrast responses to a media-effects-on-self question with that of a

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media-effects-on-others query (Price & Tewksbury, 1996). The first question can serve as an anchor for the second, leading respondents to interpret the second in light of the orientation of the first. For example, answering the media-impact-on-others question first might lead respondents to estimate large effects on others and then to adjust the impact on self downward to preserve self-esteem. Such a contrast might not happen if respondents were asked to estimate effects on self first or if they were asked to make only a single estimate of media impact (either on themselves or others) rather than doing both. A number of studies have examined whether the third-person effect disappears when question order is counterbalanced or experimentally manipulated. The answer that emerges from the overwhelming number of studies is: No, the effect persists, regardless of question order or format (e.g., Gunther, 1995; Price & Tewksbury, 1996; Salwen & Driscoll, 1997).4 We are not home free yet. There is a final, nettlesome possibility that the third-person effect may subtly be influenced by the survey research environment. This is, after all, a context in which individuals must answer questions bearing on their view of themselves, questions that are designed by people they do not know. It is a formal setting, which probably makes it more difficult for individuals to acknowledge unique vulnerability. Might the context itself goad people into projecting effects onto others? Perhaps individuals would be more likely to acknowledge media effects if questions were posed in a nonthreatening environment, such as in the privacy of their homes by a friend who permitted them to acknowledge that an undesirable message (e.g., TV violence) might affect them in one domain (e.g., elicit fear about going out at night) but not another (cause them to become physically aggressive). Such a method would not eliminate third-person effects—they seem too robust for that—but they might diminish them or open up new perceptual vistas.

CYBERSPACE AND BEYOND The third-person effect was conceptualized to explain divergent perceptions of communication effects, particularly those of mass media. What happens when mass media become amalgamated with a host of new media, particularly the Internet? At first blush, it might seem as if the third-person effect would wither away. The Internet is not a mass
Although question order does not explain away third-person effects, it would be surprising if it had no influence whatsoever, given the role that perceptual contrasts play in thirdperson perceptions. A minority of studies have found question-order effects (David & Johnson, 1998; Dupagne, Salwen, & Paul, 1999; Price & Tewksbury, 1996), suggesting that third-person perceptions may be more sensitive to situational variations than Davison suspected, a point that contemporary theorists have come to accept.
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medium in the traditional sense. There are not always mass audiences, and effects may be limited to audience segments who tune into various Web sites. Under such circumstances, observers may be less likely to adhere to hypodermic needle models of effects or to stereotypic views of the mass audience. What’s more, when people are simultaneously message transmitters and receivers, they may view communication effects through more complex lenses. Third-person perceptions will change to fit new media, but they are unlikely to disappear. Given the psychological functions that third-person perceptions serve and the ability they have shown to adapt to diverse communication situations over time, the more likely scenario is that we will continue to find discrepancies in beliefs about cyberspace message effects on self and others. It is commonplace to read that parents want to restrict adolescents’ interactive computer services or access to cyberporn sites. Yet it is ironic and noteworthy from a theoretical perspective that teenagers who regularly use the Internet and are approached for “cybersex” typically “give such solicitors the brush-off, believing them to be in their own age group” (Thomas, 2000, p. 1A). Perhaps parents underestimate the ability of their children to stave off harmful media effects. More generally, as this example suggests, the Internet is rife with implications for third-person effects. Issues include (a) perceptions of the impact of racy chat room discussions on vulnerable audiences, (b) employers’ (possibly exaggerated) beliefs that employees’ on-the-job use of entertaining Web sites will reduce their productivity, and (c) interfaces between thirdperson perceptions of defamatory communications and 21st-century libel law, which probably will revise rigid distinctions between private citizens and public officials (Rosen, 2000). In sum, nearly two decades after Davison published his pioneering paper, the third-person effect continues to intrigue scholars and engage practitioners. Yet if the area is to advance scientific knowledge in the years to come, researchers must elucidate the contexts in which third-person perceptions are most likely to operate and conduct studies that are less artificial or more ecologically valid. What’s more, if the third-person effect is to fully emerge “as a major media-effects approach” (Salwen & Driscoll, 1997, p. 61), we researchers must do a better job of linking perceptions with actual media effects. We need to build third-person theory into the design of campaign messages. Conventional approaches to communication campaigns—arouse fear and convince people they can cope with danger—need to be revised to take into account what we know about individuals’ propensity to deny that bad things will happen to them. In the area of AIDS prevention, communications frequently run up against people’s illusions of invulnerability. Consequently, practitioners might have better luck if they focused on

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the third-person angle—correcting adolescents’ misimpressions that peers believe safer sex is a bad thing. Similarly, campaigns aimed at reducing binge drinking on campus might be more successful if they focused on changing beliefs about how much other students drink than on arousing fear (e.g., Zernike, 2000). Anti-binge drinking messages are likely to run up against standard defense mechanisms, notably students’ illusory conviction that “bad things won’t happen to me if I regularly get drunk.” Accordingly, practitioners might be more likely to change attitudes if they emphasized that students overestimate how much their peers drink than that they underestimate their own personal dangers of binge drinking (Perloff, 2000). Given that students who overestimate how much peers drink are more likely to drink heavily (Zernike, 2000), the emphasis on social norms might resonate with student audiences. A final agenda for TPE research is the linkage between third-person perceptions and larger societal issues. The third-person effect is typically viewed as an individual-level factor; yet it can be seen as operating on a social level as well. Communities and cultures vary along thirdperson effect lines, with some cultures probably exhibiting stronger selfother disparities than others. In communities where risks are ubiquitous and there is little time for introspection about personal vulnerability to danger, third-person effects may be diminished. At the same time, thirdperson effects should be augmented by certain social factors and curtailed by others. For instance, when opinions are polarized and group identities salient, third-person effects should be more likely to emerge. But when intergroup tolerance is encouraged or social norms encourage acknowledgment of personal influence, third-person effects should be diminished. In the final analysis, society benefits when people gain insight into their own third-person perceptions. Social life is strengthened when individuals recognize that their perceptions of other people are not always accurate and that their fellow citizens are more capable of separating out the political wheat from the chaff than they typically assume. In a fragmented era, it is particularly important to reduce people’s inclination to psychologically separate themselves from others and to encourage individuals to view others and the self through the same sets of lenses. REFERENCES
Alicke, M. D., Klotz, M. L., Breitenbecher, D. L., Yurak, T. J., & Vredenburg, D. S. (1995). Personal contact, individuation, and the better-than-average effect. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 68, 804–825. Baughman, J. L. (1989). The world is ruled by those who holler the loudest: The thirdperson effect in American journalism history. Journalism History, 16, 12–19.

504

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Berke, R. L. (1998, February 15). Clinton’s O.K. in the polls, right? New York Times, pp. 4-1, 4-5. Brosius, H. B., & Engel, D. (1996). The causes of third-person effects: Unrealistic optimism, impersonal impact, or generalized negative attitudes towards media influence? International Journal of Public Opinion Research, 8, 142–162. Chapin, J. R. (2000). Third-person perception and optimistic bias among urban minority at-risk youth. Communication Research, 27, 51–81. Cohen, J., Mutz, D., Price, V., & Gunther, A. (1988). Perceived impact of defamation: An experiment on third-person effects. Public Opinion Quarterly, 52, 161–173. David, P., & Johnson, M. A. (1998). The role of self in third-person effects about body image. Journal of Communication, 48(4), 37–58. Davison, W. P. (1983). The third-person effect in communication. Public Opinion Quarterly, 47, 1–15. de Botton, A. (2000). The consolations of philosophy. New York: Pantheon. Driscoll, P. D., & Salwen, M. B. (1997). Self-perceived knowledge of the O. J. Simpson trial: Third-person perception and perceptions of guilt. Journalism & Mass Communication Quarterly, 74, 541–556. Duck, J. M., Hogg, M. A., & Terry, D. J. (1995). Me, us and them: Political identification and the third-person effect in the 1993 Australian federal election. European Journal of Social Psychology, 25, 195–215. Duck, J. M., Terry, D. J., & Hogg, M. A. (1995). The perceived influence of AIDS advertising: Third-person effects in the context of positive media content. Basic and Applied Social Psychology, 17, 305–325. Dupagne, M., Salwen, M. B., & Paul, B. (1999). Impact of question order on the thirdperson effect. International Journal of Public Opinion Research, 11, 334–345. Eveland, W. P., Jr., Nathanson, A. I., Detenber, B. H., & McLeod, D. M. (1999). Rethinking the social distance corollary: Perceived likelihood of exposure and the third-person perception. Communication Research, 26, 275–302. Fields, J., & Schuman, H. (1976). Public beliefs about the beliefs of the public. Public Opinion Quarterly, 40, 427–448. Giner-Sorolla, R., & Chaiken, S. (1994).The causes of hostile media judgments. Journal of Experimental Social Psychology, 30, 165–180. Glynn, C. J., Ostman, R. E., & McDonald, D. G. (1995). Opinions, perception, and social reality. In T. L. Glasser & C. T. Salmon (Eds.), Public opinion and the communication of consent (pp. 249–277). New York: Guilford. Gunther, A. C. (1991). What we think others think: Cause and consequence in the thirdperson effect. Communication Research, 18, 355–372. Gunther, A. C. (1995). Overrating the X-rating: The third-person perception and support for censorship of pornography. Journal of Communication, 45(1), 27–38. Gunther, A. C. (1998). The persuasive press inference: Effects of mass media on perceived public opinion. Communication Research, 25, 486–504. Gunther, A. C., & Hwa, A. P. (1996). Public perceptions of television influence and opinions about censorship in Singapore. International Journal of Public Opinion Research, 8, 248–265. Gunther, A. C., & Thorson, E. (1992). Perceived persuasive effects of product commercials and public service announcements: Third-person effects in new domains. Communication Research, 19, 574–596. Henriksen, L., & Flora, J. A. (1999). Third-person perception and children: Perceived impact of pro- and anti-smoking ads. Communication Research, 26, 643–665. Hoffner, C., Buchanan, M., Anderson, J. D., Hubbs, L. A., Kamigaki, S. K., Kowalczyk, L., Pastorek, A., Plotkin, R. S., & Silberg, K. J. (1999). Support for censorship of television

18. THIRD-PERSON EFFECT

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violence: The role of the third-person effect and news exposure. Communication Research, 26, 726–742. Hoorens, V., & Ruiter, S. (1996). The optimal impact phenomenon: Beyond the third person effect. European Journal of Social Psychology, 26, 599–610. Lasorsa, D. L. (1989). Real and perceived effects of “Amerika.” Journalism Quarterly, 66, 373–378, 529. Lasorsa, D. L. (1992). Policymakers and the third-person effect. In J. D. Kennamer (Ed.), Public opinion, the press, and public policy (pp. 163–175). Westport, CT: Praeger. McLeod, D. M., Eveland, W. P., Jr., & Nathanson, A. I. (1997). Support for censorship of violent and misogynic rap lyrics: An analysis of the third-person effect. Communication Research, 24, 153–174. Margolis, M., & Resnick, D. (2000). Politics as usual: The cyberspace “revolution.” Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage. Mays, V. M., & Cochran, S. D. (1988). Issues in the perception of AIDS risk and risk reduction activities by Black and Hispanic/Latina women. American Psychologist, 43, 949–957. Mundorf, N., Weaver, J., & Zillmann, D. (1989). Effects of gender roles and self perceptions on affective reactions to horror films. Sex Roles, 20, 655–673. Mutz, D. C. (1998). Impersonal influence: How perceptions of mass collectives affect political attitudes. New York: Cambridge University Press. Mutz, D. C., & Soss, J. (1997). Reading public opinion: The influence of news coverage on perceptions of public sentiment. Public Opinion Quarterly, 61, 431–451. Nisbett, R. E., & Wilson, T. D. (1977). Telling more than we can know: Verbal reports on mental processes. Psychological Review, 84, 231–259. Oreskes, M. (2000, June 4). Troubling the waters of nuclear deterrence. New York Times, Week in Review, p. 3. Paul, B., Salwen, M. B., & Dupagne, M. (2000). The third-person effect: A meta-analysis of the perceptual hypothesis. Mass Communication & Society, 3, 57–85. Peiser, W., & Peter, J. (2000). Third-person perception of television-viewing behavior. Journal of Communication, 25–45. Perloff, R. M. (1989). Ego-involvement and the third person effect of televised news coverage. Communication Research, 16, 236–262. Perloff, R. M. (1999). The third-person effect: A critical review and synthesis. Media Psychology, 1, 353–378. Perloff, R. M. (2000, October 9). Do students drink too much? [Letter to the Editor]. New York Times, p. A26 Price, V., & Tewksbury, D. (1996). Measuring the third-person effect of news: The impact of question order, contrast and knowledge. International Journal of Public Opinion Research, 8, 120–141. Price, V., Tewksbury, D., & Huang, L. N. (1998). Third-person effects on publication of a Holocaust-denial advertisement. Journal of Communication, 48(2), 3–26. Rojas, H., Shah, D. V., & Faber, R. J. (1996). For the good of others: Censorship and the third-person effect. International Journal of Public Opinion Research, 8, 163–186. Rosen, J. (2000). The unwanted gaze: The destruction of privacy in America. New York: Random House. Salwen, M. B. (1998). Perceptions of media influence and support for censorship: The third-person effect in the 1996 presidential election. Communication Research, 25, 259–285. Salwen, M. B., & Driscoll, P. D. (1997). Consequences of third-person perception in support of press restrictions in the O. J. Simpson trial. Journal of Communication, 47(2), 60–75.

506

PERLOFF

Salwen, M. B., & Dupagne, M. (1999). The third-person effect: Perceptions of the media’s influence and immoral consequences. Communication Research, 26, 523–549. Salwen, M. B., & Dupagne, M. (2000, June). Self-perceived knowledge of television violence and the third-person effect: Predicting media influence on self and others. Paper presented to the annual convention of the International Communication Association, Acapulco, Mexico. Schimel, J., Greenberg, J., Pyszczynski, T., O’Mahen, H., & Arndt, J. (2000). Running from the shadow: Psychological distancing from others to deny characteristics people fear in themselves. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 78, 446–462. Schoenbach, K. & Becker, L. B. (1995). Origins and consequences of mediated public opinion. In T. L. Glasser & C. T. Salmon (Eds.), Public opinion and the communication of consent (pp. 323–347). New York: Guilford. Schudson, M. (1995). The power of news. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press. Schwarz, N. (1999). Self-reports: How the questions shape the answers. American Psychologist, 54, 93–105. Shah, D. V., Faber, R. J., & Youn, S. (1999). Susceptibility and severity: Perceptual dimensions underlying the third-person effect. Communication Research, 26, 240–267. Smith, G. E., Gerrard, M., & Gibbons, F. X. (1997). Self-esteem and the relation between risk behavior and perceptions of vulnerability to unplanned pregnancy in college women. Health Psychology, 16, 137–146. Starker, S. (1989). Evil influences: Crusades against the mass media. New Brunswick, NJ: Transaction. Tewksbury, D., Moy, P., & Weis, D. (2000, November). Preparations for the millennium bug: Extending the behavioral component of the third-person effect. Paper presented to the annual convention of the Midwest Association for Public Opinion Research, Chicago. Thomas, K. (2000, June 8). Kids run a 20% risk of “cybersex” advances. USA Today, p. 1A. Tiedge, J. T., Silverblatt, A., Havice, M. J., & Rosenfeld, R. (1991). Discrepancy between perceived first-person and perceived third-person mass media effects. Journalism Quarterly, 68, 141–154. Tyler, T. R., & Cook, F. L. (1984). The mass media and judgments of risk: Distinguishing impact on personal and societal level judgments. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 47, 693–708. Vallone, R., Ross, L., & Lepper, M. (1985). The hostile media phenomenon: Biased perception and perceptions of media bias in coverage of the Beirut massacre. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 49, 577–585. Wartella, E., & Reeves, B. (1985). Historical trends in research on children and the media: 1900–1960. Journal of Communication, 35, 118–133. Weinstein, N. D. (1980). Unrealistic optimism about future life events. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 39, 806–820. White, H. A. (1997). Considering interacting factors in the third-person effect: Argument strength and social distance. Journalism & Mass Communication Quarterly, 74, 557–564. Zernike, K. (2000, October 3). New tactic on college drinking: Play it down. New York Times, pp. A1, A21.

References: Alicke, M. D., Klotz, M. L., Breitenbecher, D. L., Yurak, T. J., & Vredenburg, D. S. (1995). Personal contact, individuation, and the better-than-average effect. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 68, 804–825. Baughman, J. L. (1989). The world is ruled by those who holler the loudest: The thirdperson effect in American journalism history. Journalism History, 16, 12–19. 504 PERLOFF Berke, R. L. (1998, February 15). Clinton’s O.K. in the polls, right? New York Times, pp. 4-1, 4-5. Brosius, H. B., & Engel, D. (1996). The causes of third-person effects: Unrealistic optimism, impersonal impact, or generalized negative attitudes towards media influence? International Journal of Public Opinion Research, 8, 142–162. Chapin, J. R. (2000). Third-person perception and optimistic bias among urban minority at-risk youth. Communication Research, 27, 51–81. Cohen, J., Mutz, D., Price, V., & Gunther, A. (1988). Perceived impact of defamation: An experiment on third-person effects. Public Opinion Quarterly, 52, 161–173. David, P., & Johnson, M. A. (1998). The role of self in third-person effects about body image. Journal of Communication, 48(4), 37–58. Davison, W. P. (1983). The third-person effect in communication. Public Opinion Quarterly, 47, 1–15. de Botton, A. (2000). The consolations of philosophy. New York: Pantheon. Driscoll, P. D., & Salwen, M. B. (1997). Self-perceived knowledge of the O. J. Simpson trial: Third-person perception and perceptions of guilt. Journalism & Mass Communication Quarterly, 74, 541–556. Duck, J. M., Hogg, M. A., & Terry, D. J. (1995). Me, us and them: Political identification and the third-person effect in the 1993 Australian federal election. European Journal of Social Psychology, 25, 195–215. Duck, J. M., Terry, D. J., & Hogg, M. A. (1995). The perceived influence of AIDS advertising: Third-person effects in the context of positive media content. Basic and Applied Social Psychology, 17, 305–325. Dupagne, M., Salwen, M. B., & Paul, B. (1999). Impact of question order on the thirdperson effect. International Journal of Public Opinion Research, 11, 334–345. Eveland, W. P., Jr., Nathanson, A. I., Detenber, B. H., & McLeod, D. M. (1999). Rethinking the social distance corollary: Perceived likelihood of exposure and the third-person perception. Communication Research, 26, 275–302. Fields, J., & Schuman, H. (1976). Public beliefs about the beliefs of the public. Public Opinion Quarterly, 40, 427–448. Giner-Sorolla, R., & Chaiken, S. (1994).The causes of hostile media judgments. Journal of Experimental Social Psychology, 30, 165–180. Glynn, C. J., Ostman, R. E., & McDonald, D. G. (1995). Opinions, perception, and social reality. In T. L. Glasser & C. T. Salmon (Eds.), Public opinion and the communication of consent (pp. 249–277). New York: Guilford. Gunther, A. C. (1991). What we think others think: Cause and consequence in the thirdperson effect. Communication Research, 18, 355–372. Gunther, A. C. (1995). Overrating the X-rating: The third-person perception and support for censorship of pornography. Journal of Communication, 45(1), 27–38. Gunther, A. C. (1998). The persuasive press inference: Effects of mass media on perceived public opinion. Communication Research, 25, 486–504. Gunther, A. C., & Hwa, A. P. (1996). Public perceptions of television influence and opinions about censorship in Singapore. International Journal of Public Opinion Research, 8, 248–265. Gunther, A. C., & Thorson, E. (1992). Perceived persuasive effects of product commercials and public service announcements: Third-person effects in new domains. Communication Research, 19, 574–596. Henriksen, L., & Flora, J. A. (1999). Third-person perception and children: Perceived impact of pro- and anti-smoking ads. Communication Research, 26, 643–665. Hoffner, C., Buchanan, M., Anderson, J. D., Hubbs, L. A., Kamigaki, S. K., Kowalczyk, L., Pastorek, A., Plotkin, R. S., & Silberg, K. J. (1999). Support for censorship of television 18. THIRD-PERSON EFFECT 505 violence: The role of the third-person effect and news exposure. Communication Research, 26, 726–742. Hoorens, V., & Ruiter, S. (1996). The optimal impact phenomenon: Beyond the third person effect. European Journal of Social Psychology, 26, 599–610. Lasorsa, D. L. (1989). Real and perceived effects of “Amerika.” Journalism Quarterly, 66, 373–378, 529. Lasorsa, D. L. (1992). Policymakers and the third-person effect. In J. D. Kennamer (Ed.), Public opinion, the press, and public policy (pp. 163–175). Westport, CT: Praeger. McLeod, D. M., Eveland, W. P., Jr., & Nathanson, A. I. (1997). Support for censorship of violent and misogynic rap lyrics: An analysis of the third-person effect. Communication Research, 24, 153–174. Margolis, M., & Resnick, D. (2000). Politics as usual: The cyberspace “revolution.” Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage. Mays, V. M., & Cochran, S. D. (1988). Issues in the perception of AIDS risk and risk reduction activities by Black and Hispanic/Latina women. American Psychologist, 43, 949–957. Mundorf, N., Weaver, J., & Zillmann, D. (1989). Effects of gender roles and self perceptions on affective reactions to horror films. Sex Roles, 20, 655–673. Mutz, D. C. (1998). Impersonal influence: How perceptions of mass collectives affect political attitudes. New York: Cambridge University Press. Mutz, D. C., & Soss, J. (1997). Reading public opinion: The influence of news coverage on perceptions of public sentiment. Public Opinion Quarterly, 61, 431–451. Nisbett, R. E., & Wilson, T. D. (1977). Telling more than we can know: Verbal reports on mental processes. Psychological Review, 84, 231–259. Oreskes, M. (2000, June 4). Troubling the waters of nuclear deterrence. New York Times, Week in Review, p. 3. Paul, B., Salwen, M. B., & Dupagne, M. (2000). The third-person effect: A meta-analysis of the perceptual hypothesis. Mass Communication & Society, 3, 57–85. Peiser, W., & Peter, J. (2000). Third-person perception of television-viewing behavior. Journal of Communication, 25–45. Perloff, R. M. (1989). Ego-involvement and the third person effect of televised news coverage. Communication Research, 16, 236–262. Perloff, R. M. (1999). The third-person effect: A critical review and synthesis. Media Psychology, 1, 353–378. Perloff, R. M. (2000, October 9). Do students drink too much? [Letter to the Editor]. New York Times, p. A26 Price, V., & Tewksbury, D. (1996). Measuring the third-person effect of news: The impact of question order, contrast and knowledge. International Journal of Public Opinion Research, 8, 120–141. Price, V., Tewksbury, D., & Huang, L. N. (1998). Third-person effects on publication of a Holocaust-denial advertisement. Journal of Communication, 48(2), 3–26. Rojas, H., Shah, D. V., & Faber, R. J. (1996). For the good of others: Censorship and the third-person effect. International Journal of Public Opinion Research, 8, 163–186. Rosen, J. (2000). The unwanted gaze: The destruction of privacy in America. New York: Random House. Salwen, M. B. (1998). Perceptions of media influence and support for censorship: The third-person effect in the 1996 presidential election. Communication Research, 25, 259–285. Salwen, M. B., & Driscoll, P. D. (1997). Consequences of third-person perception in support of press restrictions in the O. J. Simpson trial. Journal of Communication, 47(2), 60–75. 506 PERLOFF Salwen, M. B., & Dupagne, M. (1999). The third-person effect: Perceptions of the media’s influence and immoral consequences. Communication Research, 26, 523–549. Salwen, M. B., & Dupagne, M. (2000, June). Self-perceived knowledge of television violence and the third-person effect: Predicting media influence on self and others. Paper presented to the annual convention of the International Communication Association, Acapulco, Mexico. Schimel, J., Greenberg, J., Pyszczynski, T., O’Mahen, H., & Arndt, J. (2000). Running from the shadow: Psychological distancing from others to deny characteristics people fear in themselves. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 78, 446–462. Schoenbach, K. & Becker, L. B. (1995). Origins and consequences of mediated public opinion. In T. L. Glasser & C. T. Salmon (Eds.), Public opinion and the communication of consent (pp. 323–347). New York: Guilford. Schudson, M. (1995). The power of news. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press. Schwarz, N. (1999). Self-reports: How the questions shape the answers. American Psychologist, 54, 93–105. Shah, D. V., Faber, R. J., & Youn, S. (1999). Susceptibility and severity: Perceptual dimensions underlying the third-person effect. Communication Research, 26, 240–267. Smith, G. E., Gerrard, M., & Gibbons, F. X. (1997). Self-esteem and the relation between risk behavior and perceptions of vulnerability to unplanned pregnancy in college women. Health Psychology, 16, 137–146. Starker, S. (1989). Evil influences: Crusades against the mass media. New Brunswick, NJ: Transaction. Tewksbury, D., Moy, P., & Weis, D. (2000, November). Preparations for the millennium bug: Extending the behavioral component of the third-person effect. Paper presented to the annual convention of the Midwest Association for Public Opinion Research, Chicago. Thomas, K. (2000, June 8). Kids run a 20% risk of “cybersex” advances. USA Today, p. 1A. Tiedge, J. T., Silverblatt, A., Havice, M. J., & Rosenfeld, R. (1991). Discrepancy between perceived first-person and perceived third-person mass media effects. Journalism Quarterly, 68, 141–154. Tyler, T. R., & Cook, F. L. (1984). The mass media and judgments of risk: Distinguishing impact on personal and societal level judgments. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 47, 693–708. Vallone, R., Ross, L., & Lepper, M. (1985). The hostile media phenomenon: Biased perception and perceptions of media bias in coverage of the Beirut massacre. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 49, 577–585. Wartella, E., & Reeves, B. (1985). Historical trends in research on children and the media: 1900–1960. Journal of Communication, 35, 118–133. Weinstein, N. D. (1980). Unrealistic optimism about future life events. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 39, 806–820. White, H. A. (1997). Considering interacting factors in the third-person effect: Argument strength and social distance. Journalism & Mass Communication Quarterly, 74, 557–564. Zernike, K. (2000, October 3). New tactic on college drinking: Play it down. New York Times, pp. A1, A21.