The public's view of the impact of the mass media: A test of the ‘third person’ effect

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Abstract
An experiment is reported to test Davidson's (1983) hypothesis that there is a pervasive ‘third person effect' whereby people see the mass media as more likely to affect other people than it is them. Respondents were asked to judge the likely impact of three different media issues, a political campaign, the influence of violence in the media and a drink driving advertising campaign. While an issue effect was found, so that the serf was most likely to be seen as infuencible by an anti‐drink driving campaign and significantly less so by media violence and politics, in all cases others were seen as being much more affected than the self. The results of the study are discussed with reference to the concept of the Ifalse consensus effect’.
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