1 Running head: THIRD PERSON EFFECT THEORY & POLITICAL ADVERTISMENTS

The Third Person Effect Theory and Political Advertisements Steven Smith and Sandra Stone Queens University of Charlotte

2 Abstract This study examines the third person effect theory as related to political advertising. It examines the behavioral hypothesis, and seeks to make correlations with factors that influence the third person effect. Gender, knowledge of politics, and type of advertisement are all investigated as independent variables that change the way people perceive others being influenced by political ads. This study surveys fifty students at Queens University of Charlotte, and examines how, if, and why they perceive others being influenced by political advertisements more than themselves. Findings show that one s gender, one s knowledge of politics, and the type of advertisement all affect one s perceptual effect in different ways. It is also shown that an individual a strong perceptual effect will have increased support for restrictions on misleading political advertisements.

3 The third person effect theory was originally developed by W.P. Davison in his article called The third person effect in communication published in the Public Opinion Quarterly. Davison explains that a person exposed to persuasive communication in the mass media perceives it as having a greater effect on others than on themselves. This aspect of the theory is commonly referred to as the perceptual hypothesis. There is also a behavioral hypothesis, which predicts that perceiving others as more vulnerable increases support for restrictions on mass media (Sun, Pan, Shen, 2008). For example, people believe that there should be limitations on cigarette advertisements, because they are worried that they will persuade others and begin smoking. The majority of research done thus far on the third person effect theory has examined it in the context of political campaigns, advertising, and violence in television programs. Another important piece of the third person effect theory is the optimistic bias . The optimistic bias states that people have a self-serving bias when it comes to evaluating harmful or undesirable persuasive communication. Or, when and individual perceives an advertisement as something that they should not be persuaded by, the third person effect increases. (Hullman, 2008) Davison also reported a variety of evidence regarding the effects the political beliefs. People may wish to differentiate themselves from others, to the extent that they may not believe they are influenced by politicians as are others. A test of generality of the effect may be made by comparison of the perception of change due to political campaigns with that due to media campaigns which aim to change antisocial behavior, where people are likely to see it as desirable that they themselves

4 change, especially if they see themselves as not behaving in a completely desirable manner, as well as other people. It also may be done by comparison with issues of concern, such as the depiction of media violence, where people might exaggerate the effect upon others compared with the self, and so inflate a third person effect ( J.M and H Zeitz, 1998). J.M and H. Zeitz (1998) tested the effect of the third person on different media issues: a political campaign, the influence of violence in the media, and a campaign for drunk driving awareness. The results of each varied with each media issue, but the most noteworthy was anti-drunk driving campaign. The researchers found in all of them that people perceived others as more affected than themselves. The review on the impact of mass media, regarding attitudes and behaviors, has shown small effects, and is dependent upon a combination of limiting conditions, which restricts any generalizations that are made. But these limitations of impact are not obviously held by members of the public. Any effect that occurs will be seen as happening to other people, but not to the person who is asked (J.M and H. Zeitz, 1998). An interview was done with 171 people. There were equal number of men and women. It was done in a major shopping mall. The people were chosen randomly, with two different types of questionnaires, one version asking respondents how they think about the media issues, and the second with asked respondents to think about people from a different background. The third party effect was examined by the analysis of variance on the

5 perceptions of the respondents to where they thought there would be an effect on the media issues, violence versus political campaign versus drink driving and other in general versus others different to themselves, or all the measures the first two repeated measures. The results were computed as no effect equals to zero, yes equal to 1 and multiplied by 1 to 3, for the extent of the effect. The complete data done by the 171 respondents who indicated awareness on the three issues are: Significant effect for self/other indicating a third person effect for self/other F (1.169) = 266.25 p<0.001 The significant affect was on violence on television F (2,238) = 15.23 p<0.001 Significant interaction between self and issue F (2,338) = 19.15 p< 0.001 Finally, the results of Davison (1983) go further than political campaigns and suggest that a false consensus effect does not occur when the issue is one of social influence (J.M and H Zeitz, 1998) Therefore he feels strong and supports the general third effect. Stuart H. Surlon and Thomas F. Gorman believe that values have an impact on attitude towards direct reference political advertising, due to the increased usage of mass media in advertising for politicians, and an increase in the usage of political attack ads. Skeinkopf stated, that more complaints about dirty politics and unfair

6 ads are aimed at print rather than broadcast advertising and the least from people in the south . These ads are not only increasing in numbers, but also have a significant impact on voter s attitudes and belief. Furthermore, to present research looking at attacking political ads reflects on human s perception, stating the political process is involved in a mixture of cognition and affective map of politics (Stuart H. Surlon, and Thomas F. Gorman, 1998). In addition to this, the voter s short-term forces, parties, etc., has also a long-term effect on their perceptions and confirms their beliefs. It is considered as information seeking and information expectancy . According to current research our attitudes toward political ads, focusing on race, social economic class (SES), and the value system differences are the major respondent predispositions. Research identified that white middleclass people were more effective information seekers, as opposed to blacks of lower social class. White middle class people are known as highest users of mass media as a way to get their information. Respondents in this study were taken as a systematic random sample from Atlanta and Philadelphia phone directories. They did the interviews between Oct. 25 and Nov. 1 1972. The type of survey, which intended to measure people s perceptions of political advertising, was done in an ordinal order. The respondents were asked to express whether they agree, disagree or are neutral on the question. In Atlanta 408 contracts made, the completion rate was 69%, and Philadelphia 414 contracts were made and 67% was the rate. In Atlanta the percentage of male sample was 45%. Female 55%; 85% were white and 14% were black. In Philadelphia, 34% were male, 66% female; 73% were white, while 26% were blacks.

7 Joan M Phillips, Joel E. Urbany and Thomas J. Reynolds, give conformation to the effects of political advertising. They believe that voters have a strong dislike for negative political advertising. Others argue these types of ads are useful, effective and beneficial to society and may even motivate the voter s outcome. Either way, these types of ads are continuously used, because they grab people s attention, and are more memorable than positive information. In psychology, there is a well developed literature that addresses negative and positive framing of information (Joan M Phillips, Joel E. Urbany and Thomas, J. Reynolds, 2007). Also framing studies compares positive consequences of a positive behavior to a negative one, and the negative behavior was known to motivate, when processing new information. This unique insight was introduced by Klein and Ahluwalia, that was originated on voter s motivational perspective regarding prior candidate s preference will have the most impact on their reaction to the message ad states, this decision tendency has strong theoretical grounding in a generation of work in psychology and behavior decision theory, which finds that people tend to be selective in their use of information and evaluations in decision making (Bazerman, 1994: Darley and Gross, 1983; Nesbit and Ross, 1980). In addition, a specific widespread decision tendency is a confirmation, which is propensity to seek and interpret information in a manner that reinforces an existing one. Therefore the essence of confirmation is driven by the desire to maintain cognitive consistency and is reflected in the positive pole and the less preferred option. In this experiment, their study was designed to investigate both the interpretations of advertising and decision making of voter s prior to an election.

8 The participants were 145 marketing majors at the University of Notre Dame, between the ages of 17-23, and 63% were female. The participants were asked, What position on a scale below reflects your likelihood of support for the major party candidates in the upcoming election (p.798). Ron Shachar article on The Political Participation Puzzle and Marketing study indicates that political participation is due to the omission of variables. The empirical finding is that the participation rate is higher in close elections, which not only document this finding but also present a theory to explain it. This finding implies that people participate in elections because their vote might be decisive, and thus they are more likely to participate in close elections (Shachar, 2009). However, this incentive to vote is unrealistic. The likelihood that a voter s single vote will be decisive is extremely unlikely. Also this study explains that the closeness doesn t impact the turnout rate directly, but the marketing activities do. Because without this as determined in 2004 election, the number of voter s would decrease to a whopping 15 million. Therefore as stated, The sequence of events to capture the presidential election setting is as follows: First the candidates determine the allocation of their advertising budget across the 50 states, and secondly their (costly) grass roots effect in each state. From these marketing activities (and various attributes of each state), the participation rate and the vote share of each candidate are determined (Shachar, 2009). Also the equilibrium for the marketing activities in each state is driven by the closeness of race by each state level three elements: the number of electoral votes, the size of the voting population, and the effectiveness of marketing in stimulating turnout (Shachar, 2009).

9 The test model on this was done state to state, in years 1996, 2000, and 2004 for the presidential election in the United States. The endogenous variables are the shares of votes for each candidate, participation rates, advertising, and the share of eligible voters contacted by the parties (i.e., grassroots campaign) (Shachar, 2009). This also includes people that just shortly moved to the state shortly before election too. This is based on a nonstructural estimation, and depends on the closeness to the marketing variables, and does have a significant impact on the turnout. According to Jeremy Cohen and Robert G. Davis, people feel because they have special knowledge, that they won t be influenced by news media as others. Communications scholars are interested in two related areas in that are relevant in studying negative political advertising which are the third person effects on the differential impact. A researcher by the name of W. Phillips Davison expressed that the media affect may be more related to a third- person phenomenon, than a small, but expanding body of research. Davison suggests, regarding his third person conceptualization and states, people often assume that others are more affected by potentially persuasive communications than they are themselves. In turn, they may base their actions on their perceptions of how others will be affected (Cohen and Davis, 1991). Therefore it has to do with reaction of the persuasive message and not the message itself so that it generates a belief in a media effect. The mediated messages are necessary, but not enough to start such effects. A researcher by the name of Lasorsa s used a survey research, rather than experimental design for the third person phenomena. Lasorsa s had his subject

10 watch a television movie called Amerika. The movie was about a political fiction life of the United States after a Soviet takeover. Lasorsa states, the perceived political knowledge rather than real political knowledge fuels the third person effect (Cohen and Davis, 1991). Therefore people who thought they knew more politically were more likely to perceive other as more affected and vice a versa. Ninety- five students that were enrolled in Mass Communication participated in the study. The students had no experience with the third person effect, and the study was conducted a week before the 1988 presidential election. At the time there were two negative political advertisement attacks. One was towards democratic candidate Michael Dukakis, and the other on republican candidate George H.W. Bush. The tapes were used in alternate order to control the order of effect. The students were first shown both advertisements, then given an administered questionnaire where both independent and dependent variable were measured, and the candidates preference was between the subject factor and location of the perceived impact (self-vs. other who supported the attacked candidate) was within the subject factors. In 2008, Ye Sun, Zhongdang Pan, and Lijiang Shen wrote an article called Understanding Third Person Perception; A Meta Analysis . They sought to investigate three main components of the third person effect. Firstly, they believed that the third person effect would vary depending on the desirability of the influence of the media, and hence predicted that the perceptual effect would be larger when the influence of the media was undesirable to the self. Secondly, they

11 believed that the perceptual effect would also increase when the referent other is perceived to be particularly vulnerable to the specific media content in question. And lastly, they believed that as the demographic distance between the referent other and the self-increased, the perceptual effect would also increase. They examined seventeen years of empirical research on the perceptual effect dating from the original research done in the early 80s up to 2005, and did a metaanalysis of all of them. They found that while the perceptual effect size was not as large as they had anticipated, it was still undeniable as a definite factor. From the meta-analysis, they were able to support all three of their hypothesis, and concluded their second hypothesis as being the most accurate of the three. They found message desirability as being the most important factor for the perceptual effect size. When the message/media content seems undesirable to the self, the perceptual effect size increases. The reverse is also true, when the content seems desirable; the perceptual effect size is not as present (Sun, Pan, & Shen, 2008) For our study, we sought to examine four key aspects of the third person effect: the behavioral hypothesis of the theory, the correlation between gender and the third person effect, the correlation between one s knowledge on the subject matter and the third person effect, and how the perceptual hypothesis of the theory would vary if the type of media varied. We chose to conduct a survey with eleven close-ended questions (using primarily a Likert scale), and one open ended question. We conducted our pilot study on a group of four sitting at a table in Everett

12 Library. We distributed the surveys to the four individuals and they filled out the questionnaires without any difficulty. After they had finished we followed up with some questions regarding their thoughts on the survey, if there was any questions that did not make sense, and if they had any confusion while taking the survey. None of them reported any problems or difficulties with the survey. The sample we used was composed of fifty students at Queens University of Charlotte of all ages and majors. We selected our respondents using a nonprobability convenience sample. All surveys were handed out over a one-day period during hours that class was in session. The surveys were primarily distributed in the Trexler Courtyard, outside of the Coffee House, and in Everett Library. Our sample turned out to be 65% females and 35% men; we made a point to make the male/female ratio similar to the ratio of the Queens student body, in order to be sure that the sample would be representative of the entire Queens population. In terms of age groups, our sample came out to be 7.5% freshmen, 32.5% sophomores, 30% juniors, 22.5% seniors, and 7.5% other (transfer, Hayworth student, graduate student, etc.). We developed two hypotheses and two research questions, which investigate various aspects of the third person effect. Our first hypothesis deals with the behavioral aspect of the theory, which is discussed by Ye Sun, Zhondang Pen, and Lijiang Shen in their Meta analysis. The behavioral hypothesis states that when an individual perceives others as more vulnerable to persuasive media than themselves, they will have an increased support for restrictions on mass media. So

13 in our survey, we sought to measure whether this was true with students in regards to political advertising. We predicted that if a student perceives others to be more affected by political ads than him/herself, he/she will have increased support for restrictions on political advertising (in particular, ads that are in some way misleading). H1: A student s perception of the impact that political advertisements have on others will influence his/her support for restrictions on political ads. H1a: Students that believe others are greatly impacted by political advertisements will have greater support for restrictions on political ads.

So further, we predicted that students that perceive others as being greatly affected by political ads will have increased support for restrictions of political advertising, while students that did not perceive other as being greatly affected would have lowered support for restrictions. Our independent variable in this hypothesis is one s perception of the impact that political ads have on others. Constitutively, we defined this variable as one s impression of how someone other than themselves is affected/influenced by political ads. Operationally, we defined this variable as whether or not one reports feeling that others are more affected by political ads than themselves. Our dependent variable in this hypothesis is one s level of support for restrictions on political advertising. Constitutively, we defined this variable as whether or not one is an advocate of clear limitations put on political ads. This variable was operationally defined as whether or not one reports wanting

14 restrictions on negative, one-sided, and non-fact-based political ads. On the survey, one of our questions was React to the following statement about yourself: I feel that others are more affected by political ads than I am. The respondents could answer on a scale of 1-5 (1 being Strongly Disagree , 5 being Strongly Agree ). This question represented our independent variable. We followed this question with three questions to represent our dependent variable: y React to the following statement about yourself: There should be restrictions on political ads that contain one-sided or distorted information.

y React to the following statement about yourself: There should be restrictions on political ads that directly portray another candidate in a negative way.

y React to the following statement: Political ads should be allowed to contain only fact-based information.

These questions also were to be answered on a Likert scale of 1-5 (1 being Strongly Disagree , 5 being Strongly Agree ). Because our hypothesis was geared more towards the students that did, in fact, perceive that others were greatly affected by political ads, we focused on the surveys of the respondents that reported such. 68% of the students that reported perceiving others as greatly affected by political advertisements (those who either answered Agree or Strongly Agree ), also reported having support (answered

15 either Agree or Strongly Agree ) for restrictions on political advertisements that contain one-sided or distorted information . 72% of students that reported perceiving others as greatly impacted by political advertisements also reported having support for political advertisements that directly portray another candidate in a negative way . The most significant finding of this hypothesis was the last one; an astounding 96% of the students that reported perceiving others as greatly affected by the advertisements, also supported that political ads should only be allowed to contain only fact-based information . This hypothesis was supported, as the findings were significant and in confirmation of our prediction. There appears to be a strong correlation between one s perception of the impact that political ads have on others, and the amount of support that he/she will have for support on restrictions on political advertising. Further, there seemed to be a definite correlation between a strong perception that others are greatly affected by political ads, and increased support for restrictions. There also seemed to be a significant correlation between the portion of the sample that reported that they did not perceive others as being strongly affected by the ads, and lowered support for restrictions of political ads. Our second hypothesis drew a correlation between one s level of knowledge of politics/how informed he/she is regarding politics. This hypothesis was derived from J. Cohen s and R.G. Davis article titled Third- Person Effects and the Differential Impact in Negative Political Advertising , written in 1991. They discuss research that indicated two things: people who think they know more about the

16 topic of persuasion think they will be less influenced than others, and that the same people will perceive that others are more affected than them. H2: One s level of knowledge of politics affects their perception of the impact that political advertisements have on others. H2a: Students that consider themselves to be knowledgeable/well informed regarding politics, will perceive that others are more affected by political advertisements than they are. H2b: Students that do not consider themselves to be knowledgeable/well informed regarding politics, will not perceive that others are more affected by political advertisements than they are. We broke H2, which is a non-directional hypothesis, into two separate directional hypotheses (H2a and H2b) So further, we predicted that students that consider themselves to be politically inclined would have an increased perception that others are more affected by political ads than they are, while those that do not consider themselves to be well versed in politics will not perceive others to be more affected than they are. Our independent variable in this hypothesis is one s level of knowledge of politics. This was constitutively defined as how well informed and educated someone is regarding politics. Operationally, we defined this variable as how highly one reports their level of political knowledge. To measure this variable on the survey, we asked this question: React to the following statement about yourself on a scale of 1-5: I am knowledgeable and well informed regarding politics. As the question indicates, the respondents responded on a 1-5 Likert scale (1 being

17 Strongly Disagree , 5 being Strongly Agree ). Our dependent variable in this hypothesis is one s perception of the impact that political ads have on others. We constitutively defined this as one s impression of how someone other than themselves is affected/influenced by political ads. Operationally, we defined this variable as whether or not one reports feeling that others are more affected than themselves. In order to address this variable in the survey, we used the same question used to measure the independent variable in H1, I feel that others are more affected by political ads than I am. The respondents could answer on a scale of 1-5 (1 being Strongly Disagree , 5 being Strongly Agree ). Our findings for H2 show a definite correlation between the two variables. Firstly, we were surprised to see that only 35% of the sample claimed to be politically inclined (those who either answered Agree or Strongly Agree ). However, of that 35%, 92.9% of them reported that they believe others are more affected by political advertisements than they are. 43% of the sample claimed to not be politically inclined (either answering Disagree or Strongly Disagree ). Of that 43% that reported no real political inclination for themselves, 65% also that they did not perceive that others are more affected by political advertisements than they are. The remaining 22% of the sample claimed to be neither knowledgeable nor unknowledgeable regarding politics. Reflecting on the findings of this hypothesis, I would have to say that it was supported by our data. Both H2a and H2b showed significance, even though H2a conveyed much more distinct correlation.

18 One aspect of the third person effect that we didn t find as information on was whether or not gender plays a role in the perception. Van-hwei Lo and Ran Wei wrote an article in 2002 called The Third Person Effect, Gender, and Pornography on the Internet They drew a gender correlation in this study, supporting that females have a greater perceptual effect than men do regarding internet pornography. They found that women were more likely than men to perceive that Internet pornography will exert greater effects on other male respondents. This made us wonder if there was a correlation between gender and the third person effect when it comes to political advertising. RQ1- Does gender have an effect on one s perception of the impact that political advertisements have on others? Our independent variable in RQ1 is gender. We constitutively defined gender as the state of being male/female, and operationally defined it as simply marking male or female on the survey. On the questionnaire, one of the demographic questions asks the respondent to mark whether they are male or female. Our dependent variable in this hypothesis is one s perception of the impact that political ads have on others. Constitutively, we defined this variable as one s impression of how someone other than themselves is affected/influenced by political ads. We defined it operationally as whether or not one reports feeling that others are more affected than themselves. As mentioned before, our sample was 65% female and 35% male (roughly 32 females and 18 males). We split the surveys up accordingly, and evaluated the

19 results of each gender; what we found was striking. 57.14% of men strongly agreed that others are more affected/influenced by political advertisements than they are. 28% of the male respondents just agreed . So total, 85.14% of male respondents either agreed or strongly agreed that others are more affected/influenced by political advertisements than they are. The women, on the other hand, differed greatly in their perceptual effect. 38% of the female respondents only agreed that others are more impacted by political ads than they are; 7% of them strongly agreed , making it only a total of 45% of women that agreed or strongly agreed that others were more affected/influenced by political advertisements than we are. Another interesting point that came up in the surveys was that with the women, for the most part, their answers were about equally spread regarding their perception. 45% of them agreed or strongly agreed . However, the remaining 65% was pretty equally spread out between neutral , disagree , and strongly disagree . This was quite the contrary with the male respondents. 85.14% of men either agreed or strongly agreed , but the remaining 14.86% mostly responded with neutral . There was only a couple male respondents that disagreed or strongly disagreed When we were initially developing RQ1, we begun thinking about what other factors might alter the third person effect. We wondered if the medium in which the advertisement is being presented has any effect on the way people perceive others being affected. Our second research question looks into how the third person effect might vary as the type of advertisement varies.

20 RQ2- How will students perception of the impact that political advertisements have on others vary, when the type of advertisement varies? For RQ2, our independent variable is the type of political advertisement. We constitutively defined this as the form in which a political advertisement is presented. Operationally, we defined this variable as a collection of options: TV commercials, radio ads, yard signs/bumper stickers, billboard ads, and automated telephone calls. Our dependent variable in RQ2 is, again, one s perception of the impact a political ad has on others. This was constitutively defined as one s impression of how someone other than them self is affected/influenced by a political ad. Operationally, it was defined as one reporting their perceived level of impact that a particular type of ad has on others. In our survey, in order to address both variables in a way that made sense, we set it up a bit differently. We gave a list of the different types of political advertisements (TV commercials, radio ads, yard signs/bumper stickers, billboard ads, and automated telephone calls) and asked the respondents to rate each type on a 1-5 Likert based on the degree of impact they believe each type has on others (1 being No Impact , 5 being Extreme Impact ). Respondents were largely in agreement about their perceived level of impact that each type of political advertisement has on others. 82% of participants reported that they believe TV political commercials have significant to extreme impact . Only 20% of respondents reported that they believed political radio commercials have significant to extreme impact on others; 40% believed they have little to

21 no impact on others. 75% of respondents agreed that political yard signs & bumpers stickers have little to no impact ; only 7.5% percent of them thought they have significant or extreme impact . Exactly half of the sample reported that billboards have little to no impact on others and 40% believed they have some impact . Not a single person in the sample reported that billboards have extreme impact ; billboards were the only category that did not have a single respondent in that category. Automated phone calls was the consensus lowest, 82.5% of the sample reported that they have little to no impact . The aim of this study was to test the behavioral hypothesis of the third person effect, and draw correlations between contributing factors that influence the perceptual effect that others are more impacted by political ads than oneself. The behavioral hypothesis (tested in H1) was supported, and the findings were significant. Of the students that reported perceiving others as more affected/influenced by political ads, 68% supported restrictions on onesided/distorted political ads, 72% expressed support for restriction on any ad that portrays another candidate in a negative way , and a whopping 96% expressed support for political ads only being allowed to contain fact based information . All of these percentages were a majority, overwhelmingly so the 96%. As an implication of this finding, we can conclude that students that have a high perceptual effect, will have increased support for restrictions. Advertisements with solely fact based information seemed to be the most important to the students. This may have been because fact based sums up the other two options. If a commercial contains only facts, it cannot contain one-sided/distorted information, and likely cannot contain

22 negative portrayals of another candidate either. But why does this correlation exist? Those with a high perceptual effect often view themselves as immune to the political advertisement; they feel that they do not need to worry about themselves because they will not be influenced either way. However, they feel the need to protect the others that will be affected. Therefore, those will a high perceptual effect are more willing to support restrictions on political ads so that others will not be misinformed. Our second hypothesis was also significantly supported by the data. The findings mirrored those of prior studies, confirming that one s level of knowledge on the topic of persuasion will have an effect their perception of how impacted others are by the persuasive media. Further, it was supported that heightened levels of knowledge of politics, results in a heightened perceptual effect. The contrary is also supported; low levels of political familiarity results in a much lower perceptual effect. This could be true for a variety of reasons. The primary reason being that those willing to admit their high level of political knowledge on a survey, are generally those that also have notably high self-esteem. Those with higher selfesteem and a proud self image are much more likely to believe they are immune to the persuasion of the advertisement. Further, they are more inclined to believe that since others are not as well informed as them, others will likely be influenced more than them. One of the most notable findings was the correlation between gender and the perceptual effect. The results overwhelmingly indicated that men are much more

23 prone than women to believe that others will be more influenced/affected by political ads than themselves. There could be numerous explanations for this as well, and it seems possible that this too may have something to do with self-esteem. By nature, men are much less willing than women to admit when they re wrong. Perhaps men are more clutched to their opinion than women, and are in turn less likely to feel persuaded by a message that contradicts their prior beliefs. Lastly, we looked at which type of political advertisements (TV commercials, radio ads, yard signs/bumper stickers, billboard ads, and automated telephone calls) trigger the greatest perceptual effect. Political commercials on television scored the highest. Or, most respondents thought that political ads on TV have the greatest impact on others. Television is the only medium on the list of which the viewer gets to experience the persuasion with his/her eyes and ears at once. Visuals and audio working together can be extremely persuasive. Automated telephone calls, on the other hand, scored the lowest in perceptual effect. Or, students believed that they had the least effect on others. Automated phone calls are usually a candidates voice advocating him/herself; it s a very impersonal advertising strategy. The same call might go out to millions of homes. People live busy lifestyles, and its likely that most people hang up there phones before even listening to the full message. With this being the case, it makes sense that students would choose automated phone calls as the medium that impacts others the least. In order to fully comprehend the third person effect theory, one must fully understand both the perceptual and behavioral hypothesis, and what contributes to

24 them. Gender, knowledge of the topic of persuasion, and type of media medium are just a few of the many explanations for an increased or decreased third person effect. With the 2012 Presidential Election fast approaching now, its important for us all to understand the third person effect as it applies to politics.

25 References

Cohen, J., Davis, R. G., (1991). Third- Person Effects and the Differential Impact in Negative Political Advertising. 68 No. 4, 680-688

Gordon, T. F., Stuart S. H., (1998). How Values Affect Attitudes Toward Direct Reference Political Advertising. Journalism Quarterly, 89-98

Hullman, G. A. (2008). Antecedents to the Third-person Perceptual Effect. Journal of the Northwest Communication Association, 3752-77

Innes, J. M., Zeitz, H. (1998). The public s view of the impact of the mass media: A test of the third person effect. European Journal of Social Psychology, 18, 457463.

Phillips, J. M., Reynolds, T. J., Urbany, J. E. (2007). Confirmation and the Effects of Valenced Political Advertising: A Field Experiment. Journal of Consumer Research, Inc., 34, 794-805

Shachar, R. (2009). The Political Participation Puzzle and Marketing, Journal of

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Ven-hwei, L., & Ran, W. (2002). Third-Person Effect, Gender, and Pornography on the Internet. Journal of Broadcasting & Electronic Media, 46(1), 13

Ye, S., Zhongdang, P., & Lijiang, S. (2008). Understanding the Third-Person Perception: Evidence From a Meta-Analysis. Journal of Communication, 58(2), 280-300