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The Third-Person Perception as Social Judgment

An Exploration of Social Distance and Uncertainty in Perceived Effects of Political Attack Ads

School of Journalism and Mass Communication at the University of Wisconsin-Madison

Zhongdang Pan

Department of Communication Arts at the University of Wisconsin-Madison

Ye Sun

Department of Communication Arts at the University of Wisconsin-Madison

Joseph Abisaid

Department of Communication Arts at the University of Wisconsin-Madison

Debra Houden

Department of Communication Arts at the University of Wisconsin-Madison

Although numerous studies have shown the third-person perception, explanation of why and how self-other perceptual gaps occur remains underdeveloped. Conceiving message-effect perceptions as a form of social judgment under varying degrees of uncertainty, this study attempts to demonstrate the responsiveness of the perceptual gap to information on message effectiveness and to explicate the uncertainty-reduction interpretation of social distance corollary. Analyzing data from a survey and an experiment, this study finds that credible information on overall message ineffectiveness leads to reductions in estimated effects of the messages on both self and various others and in self-other perceptual gaps when the other is most distant from self. Consistent with the uncertainty reduction argument, the self-other perceptual gaps are related to perceived similarity of the others and vary in response to labels of the others that cue different degrees of similarity with self. Directions for future studies and practical implications are discussed.

Key Words: third-person effect • perceptual bias • social distance • judgment • uncertainty reduction • effects

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