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 Self Versus Others
Media, Messages,
and the Third-Person Effect
 LEA’s COMMUNICATION SERIES
Jennings Bryant/Dolf Zillmann, General Editors

Selected titles include the following:

Berger • Planning Strategic Interaction: Attaining Goals Through
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Bryant/Zillmann • Media Effects: Advances in Theory and Research,
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Fortunato • Making Media Content: The Influence of Constituency
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of Media and Marketing
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For a complete list of other titles in LEA’s Communication Series,

please contact Lawrence Erlbaum Associates, Publishers
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 Self Versus Others
Media, Messages,
and the Third-Person Effect

Julie L. Andsager
The University of Iowa

H. Allen White
Murray State University

LAWRENCE ERLBAUM ASSOCIATES, PUBLISHERS

2007 Mahwah, New Jersey London
This edition published in the Taylor & Francis e-Library, 2009.
To purchase your own copy of this or any of Taylor & Francis or Routledge’s
collection of thousands of eBooks please go to www.eBookstore.tandf.co.uk
.
Copyright © 2007 by Lawrence Erlbaum Associates, Inc.
All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced in any
form, by photostat, microform, retrieval system, or any other means,
without prior written permission of the publisher.

Lawrence Erlbaum Associates, Inc., Publishers

10 Industrial Avenue
Mahwah, New Jersey 07430
www.erlbaum.com

Cover design by Tomai Maridou

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Andsager, Julie L.
Self versus others : media, messages, and the third-person effect /
Julie L. Andsager & H. Allen White.
p. cm.
Includes bibliographical references and index.
ISBN 978-0-8058-5716-0 — 0-8058-5716-8 (cloth)
ISBN 978-1-4106-1612-8 (e book)
1. Mass media—Social aspects. 2. Mass media—Psychological aspects.
3. Persuasion (Psychology). I. White, H. Allen. II. Title.
HM1206.A538 2007
303.3'42—dc22 2006029772
CIP

ISBN 0-203-93649-3 Master e-book ISBN

For M. Mark Miller—
teacher, advisor, friend
 Contents

Preface ix

1 The Third-Person Effect 1

2 Receiver Variables 12

3 Message Variables 31

4 Source and Channel Variables 48

5 The First-Person Effect as Persuasion 60

6 Defining the Others 78

7 Systematic Versus Heuristic Processing 102

8 Understanding the Third-Person Effect as a Special 118

Context for Persuasion
References 135

Author Index 147

Subject Index 151

vii
 Preface

For more than two decades, the third-person effect has intrigued scholars in
public opinion and mediated communication research. The notion that we
perceive ourselves virtually untouched by negative or harmful media mes-
sages whereas others surely must be affected was first articulated by the soci-
ologist W. Phillips Davison in 1983. Simple on its face, the third-person
effect summarizes the product of far more complex social psychological pro-
cesses. Thus, scholars have produced countless studies (re)documenting
the effect’s existence and attempting to determine why and under what con-
ditions it exists. Several explanations have been proffered, but none as yet
fully explains the third-person effect.
One of our purposes in writing this book was to synthesize extant research
on the third-person effect in a more comprehensive manner than is allowed
in the space allotted in journal articles or book chapters. The sheer volume
of published studies renders impossible a thorough review of the third-per-
son effect literature in two or three pages. We have attempted to include all
published works on the phenomenon, but given the breadth of journals in
which third-person effects studies have appeared, it is quite probable that
we have inadvertently missed some. Omission should not reflect poorly on
the authors of those studies.
Our primary purpose, however, was to explore the underlying concepts
and connections that the third-person effect shares with established theo-
ries of persuasion and mediated communication. In doing so, we suggest a
direct link between the third-person effect and coorientation (McLeod &
Chaffee, 1973). We further contend that cognitive processing styles, which
serve as the mechanism for prominent persuasion models (e.g., Chaiken,
Liberman, & Eagly, 1989; Petty & Cacioppo, 1986), form the basis of the
ix
x PREFACE

mechanism driving the third-person effect as well, because they tap into the
causes of perceptual discrepancies. Basically, we suggest that the first-person
effect (the notion that we perceive ourselves more influenced than others by
positive messages) is a type of persuasion. In other words, this concept that
has seemed to stymie researchers is nothing new or unusual.
We intend for this book to stimulate new ways of thinking about the
third-person effect. It is our hope that our scholarly colleagues find the argu-
ments it contains provocative and that they use the ideas as the foundation
of further study into the processes of perceptions and persuasion. The book
traces the evolution of theory building surrounding the third-person effect,
noting methodological and conceptual issues where necessary. As such, we
intend for Self Versus Others to be a valuable resource for researchers and fu-
ture researchers, both as a snapshot of a specific phenomenon and as a
guidebook for conceptualizing the building of theory. It should be useful in
the theory classroom and as a reference for scholars.
By no means, though, do we intend this book as the final word on the
third-person effect. Indeed, as we go through the production process, new
studies on the effect are appearing in journals and conference programs.
This book is the first to focus on the third-person effect, however, and the
most comprehensive discussion of it to date. Considering that third-person
effect research continues to intrigue scholars of mediated communication,
public opinion, and social psychology—to name a few disciplines—we fully
expect another volume to supplant this one. For now, however, Self Versus
Others should provide fodder for thought, discussion, and further research.

STRUCTURE OF THIS BOOK

The book consists of two parts. In the first half, we synthesize two decades
and more of research on the third-person effect. To better position the effect
as a contextual variable, we have divided the review into chapters based on
traditional models of communication (Lasswell, 1948) and persuasion
(McGuire, 1968). Individuals participating in third-person effect studies to
form the self within the model are construed as receivers of messages. Chap-
ter 2, therefore, examines the individual-level traits that have been studied
as characteristics of research participants themselves—exposure, knowl-
edge, ego involvement, and the like.
Chapter 3 turns to message characteristics that affect the magnitude of
third- or first-person perceptions. Does violent television programming pro-
duce greater perceptual discrepancies than, say, political attack advertising?
Because the message content is generally the focus of the behavioral compo-
nent, the behavioral component is addressed in the third chapter. Given the
purpose of the book, however, we devote far more space to the perceptual
component throughout.
PREFACE xi

In chapter 4, we discuss the variables relevant to the source of the message

in question, primarily credibility and expertise. Limited research has ana-
lyzed the role of channels in the third-person effect, and because channels
are often not clearly defined in these studies (e.g., television violence sets
the focus on the channel, but without a specific program or incident, it is
also a source), they are included in chapter 4.
The second half of the book shifts to discussion of how third-person per-
ceptions are, in essence, an instance of persuasion. We connect the third-
person perception to extant persuasion theories to illustrate the inherent
similarities among the source, receiver, and message variables among them,
in addition to mechanisms underlying them. Thus, chapter 5 analyzes the
relationship between the first-person effect and basic persuasion in terms of
self-enhancement motivations, concluding that the first-person perception
is merely the result of successful persuasion.
Chapter 6 reviews social distance in terms of the various definitions of
“others” that scholars have employed in their third-person effect studies.
Chapter 7 focuses on systematic and heuristic processing, the mecha-
nisms for several persuasion models (Chaiken, Liberman, & Eagly, 1989;
Petty & Cacioppo, 1986). We argue that third-person effects (and persua-
sion) are the results of systematic processing on the part of the self, whereas
the assumption is made that others rely only on heuristic processing.
Finally, in chapter 8 we present a model extending the third-person effect
that, we believe, will serve to increase the parsimony, heuristic nature, and
predictive nature of persuasion. Because the relationship of self to others is
so crucial in the direction and magnitude of perceptual discrepancies, dis-
cussion of our model depends heavily on coorientation (McLeod & Chaffee,
1973). The coorientation model is commonly used to understand how audi-
ences make decisions about organizations and their communication, which
suggests clear implications for perceptual discrepancies.

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

It is a joy to publicly thank a few of the individuals who have made our intel-
lectual lives fulfilling and fun over the years and those who have contributed
specifically to the completion of this book. Richard M. Perloff inadvertently
planted the seed for the book during the 2003 meeting of the Midwest Asso-
ciation for Public Opinion Research, and his enthusiastic support of our
work for many years has been a source of pride and gratitude. Furthermore,
Rick has published three incisive syntheses of research on the third-person
effect that have inspired, informed, and confounded us and other scholars.
Our greatest debt is to M. Mark Miller, now retired, of the University of
Tennessee-Knoxville. Mark taught us theory and quantitative methods,
and advised our dissertations. Most importantly, he showed us the joy of re-
xii PREFACE

search for its own sake. We hope that this book—which could not have ex-
isted without his instruction and friendship—in some small way acknowl-
edges all he means to us.
The people of Lawrence Erlbaum Associates have been encouraging and
patient during production of this volume. Linda Bathgate’s support has been
invaluable. We thank Karin Wittig Bates and Sara Scudder for their work on
production. Our professional colleagues—Rick Perloff, David Tewsbury,
and David Roskos-Ewoldsen—whose comments on our proposal made this
a stronger publication—deserve our thanks as well, as do those researchers
whose work is cited throughout this book.
Because of their contributions, any errors, misstatements, or misinterpre-
tations are ours alone.

—Julie L. Andsager
—H. Allen White
 1
The Third-Person Effect

In early 2004, religious leaders apprehensively debated on network news

programs whether the then-unreleased film The Passion of the Christ—Mel
Gibson’s depiction of the last hours of Jesus Christ and his crucifixion—
would generate anti-Semitism among its audiences. A small group of pro-
testers picketed outside a Manhattan, New York, movie theater when the
film opened in late February (Patterson, 2004). Subsequent polls found
mixed results as to whether their fears were well founded, with participants
who had seen the film, and those who planned to, more likely to say that
Jews were responsible for the death of Christ than those who had not seen it,
although of course it is quite probable that these moviegoers already held
that belief (The Pew Research Center for the People and the Press, 2004).
As the film Fahrenheit 9/11 was released in the early summer of 2004, Re-
publican leaders, apparently assuming that voters in the upcoming presi-
dential election might be negatively influenced by the film, first sought to
discourage audiences from seeing it (Rich, 2004). When the film set a record
in ticket sales for a documentary in its first weekend (“Moore: Thanks, Op-
ponents,” 2004), however, the same leaders reappeared on network news
programs to castigate the credibility of its maker.
Two years later, the American Family Association threatened the retail
chain Wal-Mart when the corporation began selling DVDs of Brokeback
Mountain, a film the AFA accused of promoting a gay agenda. The organiza-
tion was concerned that children might see the posters for Brokeback Moun-
tain in Wal-Mart stores and become attracted to the film (Bosman, 2006),
thus possibly falling into the temptation of homosexuality.
Beyond these controversial episodes, parents of small children have ex-
pressed concern that their children are heavily influenced by food advertis-
1
2 CHAPTER 1

ing on television, with about half reporting that they fear the influence is “a
lot” (Rideout, 2004)—this despite the fact that most children must rely on
their parents to actually purchase any food they consume.
The U.S. presidential election of 2004—the “Armageddon election,” ac-
cording to some (Maraniss, 2004)—drew a record number of voters, but
perhaps the most salient issue in the news was the “red versus blue” division,
a nod to the color coding television networks used in their election night
coverage to depict states that voted Republican (red) or Democratic (blue).
For the rest of November, news media, blogs, and pundits toyed with the
meaning of the red–blue divide. A survey conducted about one month after
Election Day asked Americans whether they thought the nation was more
politically divided than in the past; 66% said the division had increased, but
they estimated that 40% of people they knew had not noticed a change (The
Pew Research Center for People and the Press, 2005).
What do these widely disparate examples have in common? For the
movie controversies, the outcry that occurred with their release was based
on a small group’s expectation of the negative effect that the content would
have on others. In some cases, the leaders had seen the films but they didn’t
admit to great impact on themselves—however, they seemed not to believe
their followers could be trusted to process the messages without negative
consequences. Because the religious and political leaders believed that au-
diences would be influenced, they seemed willing to limit or even restrict
people’s ability to view the film that concerned them. Parents assumed their
children’s demands for junk food must originate through persuasive mes-
sages they saw on television. On the other hand, survey respondents who
called the nation more divided after having heard for a month that it was
(and likely experiencing it in their own lives) thought that it was smart to
recognize the rift in the political landscape, but they assumed others were
not aware or involved enough to have noticed.
In these cases, groups and individuals exhibited the third-person effect,
articulated by W. Phillips Davison in 1983. The third-person effect posits
that we do not perceive ourselves to be adversely impacted—which might
mean persuaded, made more aggressive, or even simply influenced—by
messages, but we think “others” will be. As Davison noted, in a quotation
that frequently appears in third-person effect studies, “In the view of those
trying to evaluate the effects of a communication, its greatest impact will not
be on ‘me’ or ‘you,’ but on ‘them’—the third persons” (p. 3).
The more socially distant those others are, the greater the impact we en-
vision. In other words, people who seem similar to us in age, political orien-
tation, area of residence, or other relevant traits will be (so we assume) more
likely to respond the way we do than those vague other people who are older,
or more liberal or conservative, or who live far away. Regardless, however,
the emphasis is on the perceptual difference between us and them, which is
THE THIRD-PERSON EFFECT 3

referred to as the perceptual component of the third-person effect. The be-

havioral component of the effect further suggests that we will take some ac-
tion to reduce the likelihood that others will be exposed to the message (al-
though some scholars, as we discuss in chapter 3, have examined other types
of behavior).
These discrepancies are particularly pronounced when the message or
media content is perceived to be negative, dangerous, or socially undesir-
able in general. Figure 1.1 depicts a third-person perception model, in which
the solid line to self indicates an individual’s self-report on some measure of
influence following exposure to the undesirable message. The broken lines
from undesirable message to others represent the individual’s estimation of
the influence that same content will have on those others. Distant others
are positioned further from the message to indicate a more tenuous estima-
tion, or, in other words, to convey the greater guesswork required by the in-
dividual estimating the influence. Note that the self is exactly in the center
of the continuum from positive influence (e.g., donating to a charitable or-
ganization) to a negative influence (becoming aggressive); this position re-
flects the lack of message effect individuals perceive (or report) on them-
selves. Meanwhile, the larger the social distance an individual perceives
between self and other, the greater perceived negative influence on other.
Davison (1983) focused on socially undesirable messages in his seminal
article, such as propaganda during war, television creating materialistic de-
sires in children, and political advertising against a favored candidate. He
did not consider the converse possibility—that of a positive message. Would
perceptual discrepancies evince the same patterns for messages that advo-
cated a desirable behavior or attitude? Gunther and Thorson (1992) hypo-
thesized that, in fact, prosocial content, such as that in public service an-

Figure 1.1. Third-person effects on self and others.

4 CHAPTER 1

nouncements, would stimulate individuals to perceive themselves more af-

fected than others. In finding support for this hypothesis, they coined the
term “reverse third-person effect” (p. 591). Following Perloff’s (1993b) syn-
thesis of third-person effect literature, “first-person effect” and “reverse
third-person effect” were used interchangeably.1 (Perloff explained the
grammatical etiology of third person, as in third-person voice, comparing
this to the “first person.”)
Figure 1.2 illustrates a model of the first-person or reverse third-person
effect, which is the notion that individuals perceive themselves to be more
affected by a (positive) message than they expect others will be. Again, the
solid line from “desirable” message to self indicates self-report and the bro-
ken lines from message to others the mere estimation of influence. The so-
cial distance between self and other, and self and distant other, remain much
the same as in Fig. 1.1. In the case of the first-person effect, however, the self
is more willing to acknowledge the message’s influence, usually in a positive
manner. Others may be perceived as slightly positively influenced, nega-
tively influenced to some degree less than the self was positively influenced,
or not influenced at all.
Other scholars have taken the grammar metaphor one step further and
suggested a second-person effect (Neuwirth & Frederick, 2002; Neuwirth,
Frederick, & Mayo, 2002). The second-person effect is defined as occurring
in situations of “joint media influence on self and others” (Neuwirth et al., p.
117). This concept seems to assume that under ordinary third- or first-per-

Figure 1.2. First-person effects on self and others.

1
To the best of our knowledge, the first published use of the term “first-person effect” appeared in
1991 (Tiedge, Silverblatt, Havice, & Rosenfeld). That study, however, defined first-person effects simply
as effects on self, in the literal grammatical sense.
THE THIRD-PERSON EFFECT 5

son effects, either self or other has experienced no influence, an assumption

that’s difficult to test considering that all perceptual data accrue from hu-
man subjects, who are sometimes given to obfuscation.

A RESEARCH PHENOMENON

“The Third-Person Effect in Communication” (Davison, 1983) was published

in the journal Public Opinion Quarterly, the flagship journal of the American
Association for Public Opinion Research. As such, the journal’s audience
comprises professional pollsters, mediated communication researchers, po-
litical scientists, and sociologists, among others. (Davison himself was a pro-
fessor of journalism and sociology.) It would be mediated communication
and sociology scholars who embraced the idea.
Written in an approachable, common-sense style, Davison’s (1983) arti-
cle contained no rigorous statistical or methodological support. He pre-
sented only the results of four informal experiments that he had conducted
on small groups (25 to 33 people each) of his graduate students and other
adults. The anecdotal evidence Davison provided, however, was intrigu-
ing—his personal experience and observations, humbly presented, served as
his basis for “a proposition that, for want of a better label, may be called the
‘third-person effect’” (p. 3). But there was more to it than that. Davison also
noted that previous sociological research produced results hinting at such a
phenomenon, but scholars had not “paused to comment on it” (p. 8). By the
time he linked the third-person effect with pluralistic ignorance (Katz &
Allport, 1931; Merton, 1968) and suggested it played a role in the spiral of
silence (Noelle-Neumann, 1974), Davison made a convincing case. Even
the practical implications—“[l]overs, certainly, have frequently tried to in-
fluence the behavior of the loved one by seeming to direct their attentions to
someone else” (p. 4)—intuited well.
Despite the promise the idea held, it took several years for researchers to
publicly present empirical studies testing it. A survey conducted in 1984
compared whether individuals perceived themselves and others equally in-
fluenced by public opinion polls, finding no support for the third-person ef-
fect (Glynn & Ostman, 1988). This survey seems to be one of the earliest
formal third-person effect studies.2 The first published studies appeared in
1988 in the form of experimental (Cohen, Mutz, Price, & Gunther, 1988;
Innes & Zeitz, 1988) and survey research (Glynn & Ostman, 1988). Un-
doubtedly, research studies were being presented at scholarly conferences as
well. Scholars had discovered the third-person effect.
2
For his 1993 synthesis, Perloff contacted researchers conducting third-person effect studies to find
unpublished studies to include, along with published journal articles.
6 CHAPTER 1

By the early 1990s, the existence of the third-person effect was well estab-
lished (Perloff, 1993b). At that time, Perloff reviewed the literature on the
relatively new topic, discussing all of the presented, published, or in-press
studies he could find, a total of 14. A meta-analysis a few years later included
every published article, conference paper, thesis, dissertation, and unpub-
lished paper that had been conducted up to 1998, by then 62 studies (Paul,
Salwen, & Dupagne, 2000). In the mid to late 1990s, the third-person effect
became a hot topic of study. Scholarly conferences devoted to quantitative
mediated communication research, for instance, were full of third-person
effect research. Third-person effects were tested in conjunction with estab-
lished theoretical perspectives, including agenda setting (Matera & Salwen,
1995) and the spiral of silence (Willnat, 1996). Starting in 1996, a dramatic
increase occurred in the number of refereed journal articles appearing each
year. Figure 1.3 depicts the frequency of published third-person effect arti-
cles through 2005. As of the beginning of 2006, we were able to find 94
articles and chapters in U.S. and international mediated communication
and sociology journals.
In 1996, Davison published a retrospective essay, “The Third-Person Ef-
fect Revisited,” in the International Journal of Public Opinion Research. In it,
he claimed he had no idea that the third-person effect was to become the
subject of such a flurry of research. The third-person effect, he wrote of his
thoughts in the early 1980s, was “an interesting phenomenon … but it was
of minor theoretical significance” (p. 114). After noting a few of the clever
studies derived from his hypothesis (and crediting Perloff [1993b] with re-
fining the concept to the third-person perception in order to differentiate the
perceptual from the behavioral components), Davison (1996) concluded

Figure 1.3. Third-person effect articles published in scholarly journals, 1983–2005.

THE THIRD-PERSON EFFECT 7

that “the third-person effect proved to be a more complex phenomenon

than [he] originally suspected …. [It] is just as likely to contribute to more
general theories about communication as other approaches” (pp. 114–115).
Thus, for Davison, it was enough to have served as the impetus of an impor-
tant body of public opinion knowledge; again, humbly, he did not feel a need
to claim more.
Evaluating the Third-Person Effect

Why did such a spate of research spring from Davison’s (1983) unprepos-
sessing article? As we have already said, the notion is intuitive; it makes
sense. Although one small, naturalistic experiment questioned whether the
third-person effect actually matters in society (Banning, 2001b), research
suggests a number of situations throughout U.S. history that provide evi-
dence it has influenced policy. The Sedition Act of 1798 and the prelude to
the Spanish-American War in the late 19th century, among other crises,
seem to have foundations in anxiety that others will be influenced by words
(Baughman, 1989). Certainly the tightening press and speech restrictions
surrounding several wars support the notion of the behavioral component.
According to Baughman, political actors “have left evidence that suggests, if
not how the mass media affected them, how they believed the mass media
touched others” (p. 18). Thus, not only does the third-person effect seem
logical, it also has import for the world in which we live.
In terms of social scientific research, however, the third-person effect fits
nicely with several of the criteria used to evaluate theory. Generally, “good”
theory is abstract, empirical (testable), parsimonious, generalizable, trans-
missible, heuristic, and falsifiable.3 The figures in this chapter demonstrate
the parsimony and empirical nature of the model as well as its heuristic
value. As the following chapters show, the effect is generalizable (also
known as possessing scope; Shoemaker, Tankard, & Lasorsa, 2004) to a wide
variety of messages, from persuasion to news to entertainment; across chan-
nels and over time. It is abstract in that it transcends the realm of media and
public opinion, as historical and other real-world examples illustrate
(Baughman, 1989; Davison, 1983), as well as methodological issues, such as
question order or wording (Dupagne, Salwen, & Paul, 1999; Perloff, 1999;
Price & Tewksbury, 1996). The third-person effect adheres to Popper’s
(1965) concept of falsifiability, which requires that statements (or theories)
“must be capable of conflicting with possible, or conceivable, observations”
(p. 51). The property of falsification needs enough specificity—or demarca-
tion, in Popper’s terminology—that a true test of the hypothesis can result in
its refutation. To be sure, tests of some content with some populations have
not resulted in third-person perceptions (e.g., Glynn & Ostman, 1988).
3
We are indebted to M. Mark Miller for teaching us these concepts.
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