International Journal of Public Opinion Research Vol. 8 No. 2
0954—2892/96 $3.00
MEASURING THE THIRD-PERSON
EFFECT OF NEWS: THE IMPACT OF
QUESTION ORDER, CONTRAST AND
KNOWLEDGE
Vincent Price and David Tewksbury
ABSTRACT
This study investigated the extent to which the third-person effect—the tendency of
people to estimate greater impact of media messages on 'other people' than on
themselves—might depend upon question—contrast effects (i.e. self-serving comparisons
triggered by back-to-back questions dealing with effect on others and oneself), the order
of questions, and respondents' levels of background political knowledge. Two hundred
and eighty-seven subjects participated in two experimental studies involving questions
about media coverage of President Clinton's possible role in the 'Whitewater Affair',
his alleged frequent policy reversals, the O. J. Simpson murder trial, and child molestation
charges against Michael Jackson. Both experiments resulted in significant third-person
effects that did not depend upon having the same respondents answer both questions;
means for single-question (no contrast) conditions did not differ significantly from
comparable means in two-question (contrast) conditions. No significant main effects of
question order were observed. In Experiment 1 a significant interaction between political
knowledge and question order was found, such that a negative relationship between
knowledge and perceived impact on oneself emerged when the 'self question followed
a question about perceived effects on others. Experiment 2 replicated the interaction
for two of three news stimuli, and indicated that it was not a product of differences in
the personal importance of issues. Implications of these results for understanding the
third-person effect are discussed.
A decade ago, Davison (1983) suggested the idea that people tend to believe
they are individually less affected by media messages than are other people
exposed to the same messages. What has become known as the 'third-person
effect hypothesis' is the proposition that people generally think the media's
An earlier version of this work was presented at the annual conference of the American Association for
Public Opinion Research, Ft. Lauderdale, Florida, May 1995. The authors wish to thank Elizabeth Powers
for her valuable assistance and three anonymous reviewers for their helpful comments.
© World Association for Public Opinion Restarch igg6
QUESTION ORDER, CONTRAST AND KNOWLEDGE
121
greatest impact 'will not be on "me" or "you", but on "them"—the third
persons' (Davison 1983, p. 3).
This third-person effect may have some important consequences for behavior.
Davison cites the example of film censorship. Those who pass judgment on
violent or pornographic films would be loathe to admit any untoward influence
of those films on their own values; nevertheless they often decide that these
same films would adversely affect the public—enough so that they support
restricting access or demanding changes to the films. Jurors in libel trials are
called upon to reach decisions about whether, and how much, individuals are
harmed by defamatory communications. As Cohen, Mutz, Price, and Gunther
(1988) suggest, if jurors systematically assume others are more affected than
themselves by the news media, they may end up overcompensating plaintiffs
whose reputations are perceived to have been damaged, even if they have not
been much altered (cf. Gunther 1991a). The effect may play an important role
in the realm of politics and social policy as well. Political elites may respond
strategically to each other's public pronouncements through the media by
anticipating public reaction—anticipations that may falsely magnify actual public
response (Lang and Lang 1983, Baughman 1989 offer illustrative examples).
Thus the third-person effect, although essentially perceptual in nature, may
have a number of consequential behavioral implications.
The hypothetical tendency of people to perceive larger effects of the media
on others than on themselves has been subjected to a variety of empirical
examinations over the past decade, with most studies generating supportive
evidence. A review of prior research in the area, however, reveals several
methodological and theoretically substantive issues that have yet to be adequately
addressed. Given that the effect has been traced hypothetically to self-serving
comparisons between the self and others (e.g. Lasorsa 1989, Gunther iggib,
Perloff 1993) and since most studies to date have examined the phenomenon
by asking back-to-back, parallel questions (generally asking respondents first to
estimate media effects on themselves and then on others), a basic question
arises: To what extent does the observed effect stem from psychological contrasts
set up by these explicitly comparative questions? In this connection there are
two, related methodological issues to be addressed. First, does the order in
which these questions are asked affect the tendency of people to report greater
media influence on others? Second and even more basic, does the observation
that perceived impact on oneself is less than perceived impact on others require
that both questions be asked of respondents? As will be discussed below, the
first question has received some attention in the literatrure; but the second is
perhaps more far-reaching. Is it indeed the case that people generally perceive
themselves little affected—and others greatly affected—by the mass media? Or
is it merely that, when asked to make explicit comparisons between themselves and
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other people, respondents tend to flatter themselves by reporting that they are
less vulnerable to media impact? If the tendency to report less media impact
on oneself than on others depends critically upon inducing with the survey
instrument an explicit self-versus-others contrast, then the generality of the
effect could well be called into question.
The fact that the effect has been interpreted as stemming from self-serving
comparisons between the self and others also draws attention to important
respondent characteristics that should affect the nature of those comparisons.
Chief among these is one's knowledge or expertise with reference to the topics
involved. More knowledgeable respondents might understandably distinguish
themselves positively from others, resulting in magnified differences between
judged influence of media messages on themselves and estimated effects on
others. Although the literature has offered some speculation about the role of
knowledge in magnifying the third-person effect, there are precious few data
available to examine the matter. Consequently, the present study aims to
investigate the roles of question order, contrast, and knowledge—separately and
in interaction with one another—in contributing to or inhibiting third-person
effects.
PRIOR RESEARCH AND THEORY
A number of studies have found evidence consistent with the basic perceptual
phenomenon stipulated by the third-person effect hypothesis. Cohen et al.
(1988) found that subjects exposed to defamatory news stories estimated
relatively little impact of those messages on themselves (Stanford University
students), but perceived increasingly greater effects on 'other Stanford students',
'other Californians', and 'public opinion at large'. Lasorsa (1989) found that
people surveyed after the television mini-series Amerika judged themselves little
affected by the program, even while they reckoned considerable effects on other
viewers. Additional studies suggest that people judge themselves to be less
affected than others by advertising (Rucinski and Salmon 1990, Cohen and
Davis 1991, Gunther and Thorson 1992), news stories (Mutz 1989, Perloff
1989, Gunther 1991a), media violence and pornography (Innes and Zeitz 1988,
Gunther 1991^, Rojas et al. 1996), and political campaigns (Davison 1983,
Rucinski and Salmon 1990, Cohen and Davis 1991). A recent review by Perloff
(1993) determined that out of 14 published and unpublished studies conducted
since 1988, employing both survey and experimental methods and examining
a variety of messages, all but one have found evidence of third-person effects.
It is not clear whether the discrepancy between judged influence of the
media on oneself and perceived influence on others results from tendencies to
underestimate actual media effects on the self, to overestimate effects on others,
QUESTION ORDER, CONTRAST AND KNOWLEDGE
123
or some combination of the two. Perloff (1993) notes that the basic cognitive
or motivational factors responsible for the third-person effect are presently not
well understood. It may in part stem from a kind of 'media effects schema', a
constellation of beliefs that media messages are often persuasive or manipulative,
and that audience members are generally gullible and susceptible to manipulation.
These beliefs could support overestimates of impact on the public at large. The
effect could also stem from a kind of'biased optimism' (Weinstein 1980, 1989),
a tendency of people to believe they are not vulnerable to negative events in
service of maintaining a sense of control and enhancing self-esteem. As Gunther
(1991A) proposes, people are motivated to reinforce their positive self-images
by seeing themselves as more intelligent or better off than most others, and
consequently they deem themselves less susceptible to undesired influences,
including media messages (see also Brosius and Engel 1996).
Consistent with this general explanation is the finding that perceptions of
greater media impact on other people are most likely to occur when the message
in question is associated with negative outcomes, such as defamatory news,
negative political advertisements, or pornography. Cohen et al. (1988) found
that third-person effects were magnified when the source of the message in
question (in this case, the newspaper publishing a defamatory story) was overtly
biased against its subject. People seize upon the fact that the source is biased
and discount the message (which minimizes both actual and perceived impact
on oneself), but view others as less reflective and thus especially prone to
persuasion by biased information (see also Vallone et al. 1985, Perloff 1989,
Gunther and Mundy 1993). As Perloff (1993) puts it, the effect is most likely
to occur when the media stimulus in question gives rise to the perception that
'it is not smart to be influenced by that message' (p. 9).
Some important individual characteristics may also be associated with thirdperson effects. Those who are more involved in a topic seem especially likely
to perceive untoward influence on other people. Vallone et al. (1985) and Perloff
(1989) showed televised news coverage of the war in Lebanon to groups of
pro-Arab, pro-Israeli, and neutral viewers. Those subjects with strong views
on the conflict were more likely to see the coverage—even though it was
identical for all three groups—as biased against them. They were also more
likely to believe it would sway neutral viewers against their side. Similarly,
Mutz (1989) found greater third-person effects among her respondents who
reported that the issue in question was highly important.
Other findings suggest that increased knowledge or expertise, real or perceived,
may be associated with the tendency to estimate greater media influence on
other people than on oneself (Tiedge et al. 1991, Lasorsa 1989). Tiedge et al.
(1991), for example, found that better-educated survey respondents were more
likely to exhibit third-person effects. If the effect is linked to the perception
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that 'it is not smart to be influenced' by the message under consideration
(Perloff 1993), then it makes sense that more knowledgeable or 'expert' respondents would be especially likely to distinguish themselves from the presumably less knowledgeable multitude. Drawing such a distinction may reflect
both ego-supporting and self-enhancing comparative judgments on the part of
experts, and also to some extent a realistic appraisal of limited impact on the
self. The persuasion literature, however, suggests that intelligence and knowledge
can enhance persuasion, through facilitation of message attention and comprehension, as well as counteract it through heightened critical response and
resistance to yielding (e.g. McGuire 1968, Zaller 1992).
Exactly how levels of knowledge relate to perceptions of media impact on
oneself or on others remains unclear. Lasorsa (1989) found that political
knowledge was not related to the occurrence of third-person effects. His measure
of political knowledge was of relatively low reliability (Cronbach's alpha = .62),
however, and more importantly did not seem especially relevant, as 'a four-item
index consisting of questions about national political issues', to the topics
engaged by the media message in question (the ABC mini-series Amerika). In
that same study, a measure of 'perceived expertise', assessed by asking Amerika
viewers how confident they were in their ability to answer questions about the
program's plot, characters, and content, did predict a greater tendency of (at
least self-identified) experts to judge themselves less affected by the message
than others. Unfortunately, then, no studies to date examining third-person
effects have reliably assessed the knowledgeability of their research subjects in
domains relevant to the message under consideration, forcing conjectures based
upon respondents' perceived expertise or, even more broadly, upon their
educational levels (e.g. Tiedge et al. 1991). One important aim of the present
research is to redress this problem by investigating more carefully the connection
between topic-relevant knowledge, perceived impact of media messages on
oneself, and estimated impact on other people.
M E T H O D O L O G I C A L ISSUES
As noted at the outset, all research to date bearing on the third-person effect
has examined the phenomenon by posing to respondents a series of parallel
questions about perceived media effects. Typically, research subjects are first
put in mind of some media stimulus—a news story, some brief characterization
of a news topic, a reference to a specific message (e.g. Amerika), or to a general
class of messages (e.g. X-rated material). They are then asked to indicate how
much they have been influenced by the stimulus, followed by a counterpart
QUESTION ORDER, CONTRAST AND KNOWLEDGE
125
question asking them to indicate how much they think 'other people' have been
influenced by the stimulus.1
Some researchers have questioned whether at least part of the observed
third-person effect may be an artifact of the order in which the two critical
questions are asked. A limited number of studies have found, however, that the
effect persists when the order of the crucial survey questions are reversed (e.g.
Mason 1990, Tiedge et al. 1991, Gunther 1991^). Research to date, on the other
hand, has not explicitly examined whether the effect is a basic product of
contrast itself. That is, few studies have adequately investigated the possibility
that the effect occurs only when respondents are asked to make two, implicitly
comparative judgments about the impact of some media stimulus on themselves
and on other people.
Tiedge et al. (1991) did include a question-order manipulation that may shed
light on the contrast issue, but some methodological aspects of their research
restrict the interpretability of the results. The authors note that in one of their
two samples, half received the first-person question before the third-person
question, while the other half received the third-person item first. Neither of
the two media effects—perceived impact on the self and perceived impact on
others—were significantly different across conditions. However, it is unclear
exactly how respondents were assigned to conditions. Also, rather than estimating
the effects of media messages or specific events, respondents reported their
level of agreement with such general statements as, 'The mass media convince
me to buy things I don't need and can't afford' and 'The mass media distract
me from other activities which would be better for me'. Finally, it is unclear
how these several questions were administered and which were subject to the
order manipulations. Means reported appear to be sums across several items,
raising the prospect of contrast even if the order was varied across subjects.2
The most unambiguous test of whether or not the third-person effect is an
artifact of prior question-asking practices would involve a comparison between
responses from subjects who are asked to make only a single estimate of media
influence (separately, either on themselves or on other people), with responses
from subjects asked the same questions under conditions (as typical of prior
research) where the questions immediately precede or follow a comparative
third-person or first-person counterpart.
1
Most of the research on the third-person effect has presented these questions in a back-to-back format.
However, in his seminal article, Davison (1983) notes that 'the questions about the effects of communications
on self and other were widely separated in the questionnaire' (pp. 6-7). Separation of the questions suggests
concern about the contrast effect but does not preclude the possibility that subjects are still contrasting
themselves to others as they answer the second question.
1
In an article published after our data had been collected and analyzed, Gunther (1995) reports results of
a question-order manipulation indicating even more strongly that an explicit contrast effect cannot adequately
account for differences in perceived first- and third-person effects. See final discussion below.
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For these reasons, the present study was designed with three major goals in
mind: (a) to examine at the same time the impact of question order and question
contrast on the existence and magnitude of third-person effects; (b) to gather
a reliable measure of topic-relevant knowledge and examine its impact on the
existence and magnitude of third person effects; and (c) to investigate whether
topic-relevant knowledge interacts with methodological factors in producing or
inhibiting third-person effects. It could well be, for example, that a given
question order (say, making the estimate of media influence on others first) or
that question contrast (answering both as opposed to a single one of the critical
questions) make a difference only for more knowledgeable subjects.
EXPERIMENT i
An experiment was conducted using undergraduate subjects at the University
of Michigan. Four conditions were created to isolate the roles that contrast and
question order might play in contributing to the third-person effect. The same
stimulus (a news item, described below) was presented in each of the conditions,
but the inclusion and order of questions asking subjects to estimate the effect
of the news were altered experimentally.
METHOD
Subjects. One hundred and forty-three subjects recruited from undergraduate
communication courses participated in the study. Students were told that their
voluntary participation would involve completing a short questionnaire dealing
with the media and public affairs. There were slightly more women than men
participating (62 percent were female) and close to three quarters were upperlevel undergraduates. Tests were conducted to determine whether gender or
class level contributed significantly to explaining the dependent variables. No
significant effects were detected.
Design and procedure. The study involved a between-subjects experimental
design. A paper-and-pencil questionnaire was presented as a 'Media and Public
Affairs Study' and included a series of nine filler questions followed by the
primary stimulus, which took the form of a paragraph describing news events
surrounding President Bill Clinton's possible involvement in the 'Whitewater
Affair'. Subjects were randomly assigned to one of four experimental conditions,
which differed only in terms of the inclusion and order of the questions asked
immediately following the stimulus paragraph. Those in the Self-only condition
(« = 35) answered only a single question asking them to estimate the impact of
the 'Whitewater' news on themselves. Subjects in the Others-only condition
QUESTION ORDER, CONTRAST AND KNOWLEDGE
127
(n = 38) answered only a single question asking them to estimate the impact of
the news on other people; those in the Sclf-thcn-Others condition (n = 35)
answered both questions, beginning with the estimated impact on themselves;
and those in the Others-then-Self condition (n = 35) answered both, beginning
with the estimated impact on others. All subjects subsequently completed a
series of questions designed to measure general political knowledge and provided
demographic information.
Stimulus. All conditions included the same stimulus paragraph describing recent
news coverage about President Clinton's involvement with the Whitewater
Development Corporation. The stimulus paragraph was selected from among
nine potential news topics that were pretested on an independent sample of 46
University of Michigan undergraduates. Given prior research indicating that
third-person effects are most likely to occur when the message in question is
associated with negative outcomes (e.g. defamatory news, negative political
advertisements, or pornography), the pretest aimed at selecting a news item
that would be judged negative in its valence and which produced the desired
effect. Of nine candidate paragraphs pretested, four negatively-valenced items
produced significant third-person effects. The largest pretest difference between
estimated effects on self and others was produced by the 'Whitewater' paragraph
(^13]= —501, /K.ooi); the mean estimated valence of the paragraph was also
clearly negative (M = — 1.29 on a scale from — 3 = 'negative' to + 3 = 'positive').
It was thus selected for use in the main study. The text of the stimulus paragraph
was as follows:
Much of the recent news coverage about President Bill Clinton has dealt with a scandal
called the 'Whitewater Affair'. The president and his wife have been accused of diverting
funds from a private investment to pay off debts from a Clinton campaign for Arkansas
governor. Republican members of Congress have been calling for hearings on the
allegations, and an independent counsel has been named by the Justice Department to
conduct a full investigation. Much of the recent controversy has focused on alleged
attempts by members of the White House staff to limit the amount of information that
becomes public.
Measurement of Variables. The dependent measures consisted of two questions
that, in different combinations and orders, followed the stimulus paragraph.
The 5V^question asked: 'How much do you think these events have influenced
your own attitudes toward President Bill Clinton?' Responses were given on a
scale from 1 ='no influence at all' to 7 ='a great deal of influence'. The Others
question asked: 'How much do you think these events have influenced most
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Estimated impact on self and on others: Means and standard deviations
across experimental conditions
TABLE I
Estimated impact
on self
Estimated impact
on others
Self only
Others only
3-17
(165)
N.A.
N.A.
4.26
(1-52)
Self
then others
Others
then self
3-23
(1-52)
4-37
(117)
(i-5o)
4.40
3.00
(I.IO)
Note: Means reflect values on a scale from 1 = no influence at all to 7 = a great deal
of influence. Total ^=143. Standard deviations shown in parentheses.
people's attitudes toward President Bill Clinton?' Responses were given on the
same seven-point scale.3
Subjects' levels of general political knowledge were assessed with a scale of
15 factual questions concerning local, national, and international public affairs.
The scale consisted of five fill-in-the-blank questions (on a Michigan sales tax
initiative, nuclear inspections in North Korea, the U.S. trial of a Muslim
cleric in connection with the World Trade Center bombing, the situation in
Bosnia-Herzegovina, and the location of the 1996 Olympiad). Two questions
asked which political party had the most seats in the U.S. Senate and House
of Representatives, respectively. Eight questions asked respondents to match
names in a list of prominent figures (Janet Reno, Edvard Schevardnadze, Louis
Farakhan, Mario Cuomo, David Souter, John Major, Bruce Babbit, and Jocelyn
Elders) with the appropriate selections from a list of positions they held. A
pretest (^=46) indicated that the scale was reliable (Cronbach's alpha = .82),
and this was again confirmed in the main study (Cronbach's alpha = .$6,
Guttman's lambda = .88, ^=143).
RESULTS
Means for each of the dependent measures in each of the four experimental
conditions are presented in Table 1. As expected, a significant third-person
effect emerged in both of the two-question conditions. In the Self-then-Others
1
A minor typographical error resulted in a slight change of wording in the Self-only condition. In that
condition, subjects WCTC asked about the effects of the events on 'your attitudes', while in both the
Self-then-Others and Others-then-Self conditions, the comparable question asked about the effects of the
events on 'your own attitudes'. A posttest was conducted after the primary experiment to assess whether this
difference in wording might have affected the results. Each version of the Self question—one including the
word 'own' and the other not—was administered in a randomized, between-subjects experimental design
( / V = J I ) . Results of a one-way ANOVA indicated no significant differences, F\ 1,50) = .99, n.s. In Experiment
2 (see below) all of the Self questions asked about 'your own attitudes'.
QUESTION ORDER, CONTRAST AND KNOWLEDGE
I2O,
condition, the difference between subjects' estimated impact on other people
was 1.14 points higher on the seven-point scale than the reported impact on
themselves, ^34) = 4.46, p<.ooi; in the Others-then-Self condition, the difference was 1.4 points, ^34) = 5.20, p<.ooi. A one-way analysis of variance
indicated that size of the Others-versus-Self difference (i.e. the size of the
third-person effect itself) did not differ significantly between the alternatively
ordered two-question conditions. Overall, 69 per cent of respondents in the
two-question conditions estimated more impact on others than on themselves,
while 25 percent gave the same estimate for self and for others; only 5 percent
reported that they were more greatly influenced than others.4
The means in Table 1 also illustrate that the observed difference between
subjects' estimated impact on other people and their estimated effect on
themselves did not stem from the fact they answered back-to-back questions
setting up an explicit comparison between the self and others. A one-way
analysis of variance indicated that the mean reported impact on the self in the
single-question condition ( ^ = 3.17) did not differ significantly from those in
either of the two-question conditions. Similarly, an analysis of variance indicated
that the mean reported impact on others in the single-question condition (M =
4.26) did not differ significantly from those in either of the two-question
conditions. Subject's estimated impact on others is still over one point higher
on our seven-point scale than their estimated effect on themselves, even when
the single-question conditions are compared—that is, even when the respondents
were not required, by virtue of the sequence of questions asked, to contrast
likely media impact on themselves with presumed impact on other people.
Introducing the general political knowledge scale as a covariate did not
substantially alter the basic pattern of findings produced by simpler analyses of
variance. There were, however, some notable effects of subjects' political
knowledge on their estimates of 'Whitewater's' impact. Higher levels of knowledge were significantly related to lower estimates of impact on the self (among
all 107 subjects asked the Self question, r = — .28, p<.oi). General political
knowledge was, however, not significantly related to subjects' estimates of media
impact on others (r= —.09, n.s.), or to the difference between estimated impact
on oneself and on others (r = .i8, n.s.).
In addition to its main effect on subjects' estimates of impact on themselves,
political knowledge also interacted significantly with questionnaire condition.
Specifically, the relationship of political knowledge to subjects' reported impact
on themselves varied according to the order in which questions were posed.
For subjects in the two-question conditions (71 = 70), an ANOVA revealed a
4
Analyses using as the dependent variable a dkhotomous measure indicating whether or not subjects
exhibited any third-person effect, rather than the numerical difference between the self and others estimates,
produced essentially the same general pattern of findings.
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7
Others question first
%
4
|1 3
LU
Self question first
2
1
1
2
3
4
5
6 7 8 8 10 11 12 13 14 15
Knowledge
Interaction of knowledge, estimated effect on self, and question order: Regression lines
FIGURE I
significant effect for general political knowledge, ^1,65) = 7.05, p = .oi, as well
as a significant effect for the interaction of knowledge and question order,
/XI>6s) = 5-4i, P<o$. Figure 1 illustrates the nature of the interaction by
plotting within-group regression lines for knowledge. That is, the figure presents
(in the metric of the actual data) the differential slopes of the lines summarizing
the relationship between general knowledge and estimated impact on the self
within each of the alternative question-order conditions.
As illustrated, when the Others question was asked first, subjects' estimates
of 'Whitewater's' impact on themselves decreased markedly with increased
levels of knowledge (unstandardized b= —.21, B= —.57). A similar effect of
knowledge was not obtained, however, when the Self question was asked first
(unstandardized b= —.02, B= —.06).
DISCUSSION
The results of Experiment 1 lend some measure of increased validity to prior
research on third-person effects. The tendency of subjects to estimate less media
impact on themselves than on other people was observed in every measurement
condition. It thus does not appear to be a mere artifact of question order. Nor
does it stem from more basic contrast effects owing to the juxtaposition of
explicitly comparative survey questions; subjects asked to make only single
estimates showed the same response tendencies as those responding to backto-back questions contrasting themselves to other people.
The findings also suggest that subjects' knowledge has some complex
QUESTION ORDER, CONTRAST AND KNOWLEDGE
131
connections to the perceptions underlying the third-person effect. Knowledge
was found to be inversely related to subjects' estimates of media impact on
themselves, but not to their estimates of impact on other people. This finding
suggests, for example, that prior studies finding increasing third-person effects
with higher educational achievement may stem in part from a tendency of more
knowledgeable respondents to estimate weaker media impact on themselves.
Political knowledge also interacted with question order: the more knowledgeable
subjects adjusted their estimates of media impact on themselves downward, but
apparently only after first answering the question concerning effects on others.
Why would this occur? And why would we fail to find similarly large effects
of knowledge on the estimates of self-impact when that question came before
the question about others? Perhaps it is in some sense easier for subjects to
distinguish themselves favorably against others than it is for them to distinguish
others unfavorably against themselves.
One difficulty in interpreting the role of subjects' political knowledge
rests in the possibility that it may be confounded with another, unmeasured
variable—perceived importance of the issue. Other studies have generally
found greater third-person effects among those people who find the issue
at hand especially important to them (e.g. Mutz 1989). If the more
knowledgeable subjects in our sample found the 'Whitewater' affair more
important to them personally, their lowered estimates of impact on themselves
may have stemmed not so much from knowledge per se but instead from
the perceived importance of the issue. Additionally, the pattern of results
obtained in this study does not correspond exactly with the outcomes
attributed in prior studies to ego-involvement, a construct related to issue
importance. To date the literature has found that highly-involved people
tend to estimate greater effects on others (e.g. Vallone et al. 1985, Perloff
1989) whereas here we found no significant relationships between subjects'
knowledge and their estimates of impact on others. Only their estimates of
5<r^impact were affected, and particularly so when that question followed
rather than preceded the question about others. Finally, the particular nature
of the interaction obtained was not specifically anticipated, so it is in need
of replication and testing.
A second study was thus conducted to examine the reliability of these findings
and to address general shortcomings of Experiment 1. First, as noted above, it
is possible that effects we have attributed to political knowledge may instead
(or also) stem from differential levels of perceived issue importance. Second
and more generally, it may be that the results obtained in the first study were,
at least in part, a function of the particular features of the Whitewater issue,
the lone issue examined. Third, the interaction between knowledge and question
order was not specified a priori and requires further confirmation.
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INTERNATIONAL JOURNAL OF PUBLIC OPINION RESEARCH
EXPERIMENT 2
The second study directly assessed, in addition to subjects' levels of political
knowledge, the personal importance they attached to the issue at hand. The
range of experimental stimuli was also increased in Experiment 2 to include
three different issues (only the first of which was directly political in nature):
President Clinton's purported policy reversals, the murder trial of O. J. Simpson,
and the child molestation charges leveled at popular music figure Michael
Jackson. Thus, only in the first case was there a direct connection between the
issue studied and the type of knowledge measured. For the Simpson and Jackson
stimuli, the connection between the topic and knowledge type was of a more
general nature. In most other respects Experiment 2 followed the outlines of
the first study quite closely. Subjects were again undergraduate students at the
University of Michigan. The four measurement conditions described above
were repeated. Three news stimuli (described below) were presented in every
condition, but the inclusion and order of questions asking subjects to estimate
the effect of the news were altered experimentally.
METHOD
Subjects. A separate sample of 144 subjects recruited from undergraduate
communication courses participated in the study. Students were told that their
voluntary participation would involve completing a short questionnaire dealing
with the media and public affairs. As before, there were just slightly more
women than men (53 percent female) and considerably more upper-level (82
percent) than lower-level undergraduates participating. Also as before, tests
conducted to determine the effects of gender and class level on the dependent
variables revealed no significant effects.
Design and procedure. The study again involved a between-subjects experimental
design. A paper-and-pencil questionnaire was presented as a 'Media and Public
Affairs Study', and began with a set of four filler questions followed by three
sets of media impact assessments. Each of these sets began with a short paragraph
describing a news event. Subjects were randomly assigned to one of four
experimental conditions, which differed only in terms of the inclusion and order
of the questions asked immediately following the stimulus paragraph. As before,
those in the Self-only condition (« = 37) and in the Others-only condition (« =
35) answered a single question asking them to estimate the impact of the news;
those in the Self-thcn-Others condition (71 = 36) and in the Others-then-Sclf
condition (71 = 36) answered both questions. In all conditions, subjects also
reported the personal importance they attached to each of the stimulus issues.
QUESTION ORDER, CONTRAST AND KNOWLEDGE
133
Finally, all subjects answered a battery of knowledge questions and provided
demographic information.
Stimuli. All conditions included the same three stimulus paragraphs. The order
in which the paragraphs were presented was randomized. Because third-person
effects are most likely to be observed for media presentations associated
with negative outcomes, the three stimuli were designed to carry negative
connotations. The text of each was as follows:
(a)
There has been a considerable amount of attention given lately to the murder trial
of O. J. Simpson. The former sports star and actor has been accused of murdering
his estranged wife and her male friend. The news media have been giving the
story a significant amount of coverage and have often reported information leaked
by both the prosecution and the defense in the case. As it has turned out, not all
of the reports have subsequently been authenticated. Many observers have claimed
that the media have presumed Simpson guilty without the benefit of a full trial.
(b) A major complaint made by critics of Bill Clinton is that his administration has
been too ready to change its policies in the face of opposition. These critics, who
have been given ample coverage in the news media, claim that the President's
positions seem to 'flip-flop' in response to minute changes in domestic public
opinion. Members of Clinton's administration counter that their efforts at compromise have been unfairly cast as indecisiveness. The critics, for their part, claim
that the President is too willing to give in and should be expected to more
steadfasdy hold his ground.
(c) Over the past year there have surfaced allegations that pop music star Michael
Jackson may have sexually molested minors. The celebrity's attorneys claim the
charges are groundless and are part of a scheme to extort money from him.
Nonetheless, Jackson eventually settled a civil suit that had been initiated by the
family of one of the children. The nation's news media have devoted a considerable
amount of attention to the controversy surrounding the allegations. In fact, some
people claim the level of coverage has lent more credence to the charges than they
may actually deserve.
Measurement of variables. The dependent measures consisted of two questions
that, in different combinations and orders, followed the stimulus paragraphs.
The Self question for the Michael Jackson situation, for example, asked: 'How
much do you think these events have influenced your own attitudes toward
Michael Jackson?' Responses were given on a scale from i = ' n o influence at
all' to 7 ='a great deal of influence'. The Others question asked: 'How much
do you think these events have influenced most people's attitudes toward
Michael Jackson?' Responses were given on the same seven-point scale.
Subjects' levels of general political knowledge were assessed with a scale of
15 factual questions similar to that used in the first experiment. The knowledge
134
INTERNATIONAL JOURNAL OF PUBLIC OPINION RESEARCH
scale was formed by summing the number of correct responses. The reliability
of the item was found to be high (Cronbach's alpha = .84; Guttman's lambda =
The personal importance respondents attached to each issue was assessed
with a question that followed their estimates of news impact. The question
asked: 'How important would you say this issue is to you personally?' Responses
were given on a scale from i = 'not at all important' to 7 = 'extremely important'.
RESULTS
Table 2 displays the means of the dependent measures for each of the three
issue situations. In line with the results of Experiment 1, a significant third-person
effect was detected across all of the two-question conditions. For all three issues,
/-tests indicated a significant difference between the subjects' estimates of the
impact on others and their estimates of impact on themselves. In the case of
the Simpson trial, the mean estimate of the impact on others was generally
about 1.5 points higher on the seven-point scale than the mean estimate of
impact on the self (1.43 points higher in the Self-then-Others condition, z(34) =
5.49, p<.ooi; and 1.56 points higher in the Others-then-Self condition, z(35) =
6.96, p<.ooi). Third-person effect sizes were similar for the Bill Clinton policy
reversal situation (the mean estimate of impact on others was 1.2 higher than
the estimated impact on the self in the Self-then-Others condition, ^34) = 4.23,
p<.ooi; and 1.57 points higher in the Others-then-Self condition, f(35) = 5-26>
p<.ooi). For the Michael Jackson molestation allegations, the mean estimate of
impact on others was nearly 2 points higher than the mean estimated impact
of the self (1.75 points higher in the Self-then-Others condition, /(35) = 6.59,
p<.ooi; and 1.92 higher in the Others-then-Self condition, /(35) = 6.24,/><.ooi).
As in Experiment 1, the means in Table 2 indicate slightly larger differences
in the Others-then-Self question condition than in the Self-then-Others condition; but one-way analyses of variance indicated that these differences were
not significant. With respect to all three issues, individual third-person effect
differences (estimated impact on others minus impact on self) did not differ
significantly as a function of which question was asked first. Consistent with
prior results, the proportion of respondents in the two-question conditions who
estimated more news impact on others than on themselves was high, ranging
from 68 to 76 percent; the proportion who gave exactly the same estimate for
themselves and for others was 24 or 25 percent; and between 1 and 7 percent
responded that they were more greatly influenced than were others.
Also in line with the first experiment, results indicate that the tendency to
perceive others as more likely than oneself to be influenced by media exposure
is not simply a function of having an explicit contrast drawn by juxtaposed
QUESTION ORDER, CONTRAST AND KNOWLEDGE
135
2 Estimated impact on self and on others: Experiment 2—Means and
standard deviations
TABLE
Self
Self only
Others only
then others
Others
then self
Estimated impact
on self
Estimated impact
on others
4.62
(i-59)
N.A.
O.J. Simpson trial
N.A.
4-77
(1.72)
6.12
6.20
(•96)
(i-49)
4-33
(i-7i)
5-89
(114)
Estimated impact
on self
Estimated impact
on others
3.00
(i-33)
N.A.
Bill Clinton policy changes
N.A.
3-71
(1.67)
4.91
5.06
(1.22)
(i-35)
3-43
(i-77)
5.00
(1.26)
Estimated impact
on self
Estimated impact
on others
3-8 4
(i-70
N.A.
Michael Jackson molestation charges
N.A.
4.00
(1.66)
5-32
5-75
(i-45)
(•94)
344
(183)
5-36
(113)
Note: Means reflect values on a scale from 1 = no influence at all to 7 = a great deal
of influence. Total N= 144. Standard deviations shown in parentheses.
questions. For all three issues, one-way ANOVAs indicated that estimated
impact on the self did not differ significantly among the three conditions receiving
that question (Self-Only; Self-then-Others; Others-then-Self). Similarly, for
all three issues the mean estimates of impact on others did not differ significantly
across conditions containing that question (Others-Only; Self-then-Others;
Others-then-Self). Subjects' estimates of impact on others are still markedly
higher than their estimates of impact on themselves, even when means taken
only from the single-question conditions are compared.
The above results were not substantially altered when general political
knowledge was introduced into the analyses as a covariate. In contrast to the
results of the first experiment, no main effects of knowledge were obtained.
However, once again an interaction between knowledge and question order
emerged in responses to the Self question. In two out of the three issues
examined (Bill Clinton and Michael Jackson) the relationship between political
knowledge and estimated impact on the self varied according to the order in
which questions were posed. For subjects in the two-question conditions,
ANOVA's revealed a significant interaction between general political knowledge
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INTERNATIONAL JOURNAL OF PUBLIC OPINION RESEARCH
Bill Clinton Policy Reversals
7
1
2
3
4
5
S
7
8
9 10 11 12 13 14 15
Michael Jackson molestation charges
1
2
3
4
5
8
7
B 9 10 11 12 13 14 15
2 Interaction of knowledge, estimated effect on self, and question order: Regression lines—Experiment 2
FIGURE
and question order, / 7 (i,66)^3.87, p = .os for the Clinton stimulus and
F(i,68) = 4-39,/»<.o5 for the Jackson stimulus (the interaction was not significant
for the Simpson stimulus). Figure 2 illustrates the significant interactions by
plotting wi thin-group regression lines for knowledge. As before, thefigureshows
differential slopes summarizing the relationship between general knowledge and
estimated impact on the self within each of the alternative question-order
conditions.
Just as was shown earlier in Figure 1, when the Others question is asked
first we find a negative relationship between knowledge and estimates of the
impact of events on the self. Estimates of impact on self decrease systematically
as knowledge increases (for Clinton, unstandardized b= — .17, B= —.27; for
QUESTION ORDER, CONTRAST AND KNOWLEDGE
137
Jackson, b = —.22, B= —.35). A similar effect of knowledge was not obtained
when the Self question is posed first (for Clinton, unstandardized b = .08, B =
.18; for Jackson, £ = .05, B = .io).
Issue importance did not appear connected to these effects of knowledge and
question order. Instead, it exerted an independent main effect. Across all three
stimulus situations and experimental conditions, personal importance was—as
expected—positively associated with estimates of news impact on others (for
Simpson, r = .2i, p = .02\ for Clinton, r=.38, p<.ooi; for Jackson, r=.3o,
p<.oi). However, importance was also positively associated with estimated
impact on the self (for Simpson, r = .24, p<.o2.; for Clinton, r = 47, /K.oooi;
for Jackson, r = .24, p<.02). Because increased personal importance was related
to parallel increases in both measures, it exerted no significant main effect
on the difference between them (i.e. on the third-person effect differential).
Multivariate analyses of the Self- and Other-impact measures, and difference
scores, revealed no interactions between knowledge and issue importance.
DISCUSSION
Overall, the results of these studies add a significant measure of increased
validity to prior research on third-person effects. The general tendency of
subjects to estimate less media impact on themselves than on other people was
a robust observation, occurring in every measurement condition and in response
to four different stimuli. In addition to replicating prior studies that found no
significant effect of question order on subjects' tendencies to display third-person
effects (Mason 1990, Tiedge et al. 1991, Gunther 1991b), results of these
experiments go one step further. A third-person effect differential was obtained
even when the comparisons were based upon estimates of media impact rendered
by subjects who made only single judgements, pertaining either to themselves
or to other people, independently.
Gunther's recent (1995) examination of question-order effects, published
after the data collection and analysis reported here had been conducted, reaches
a similar conclusion. With data from a telephone sample, he compares mean
estimates of effects of X-rated material on the self when this item precedes the
third-person question with estimates for the self when it follows and finds that
they do not differ significantly. A similar result is reported for third-person
estimates. That finding, when added to ours, provides strong support for the
thesis that the differences typically observed in prior third-person effects studies
cannot be ascribed easily either to question order or to a contrast effect induced
by employing both questions.
The findings of these experiments do illustrate, however, that question order
may influence subjects' estimates of media impact in some rather subtle ways,
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INTERNATIONAL JOURNAL OF PUBLIC OPINION RESEARCH
via interactions with other variables such as respondents' levels of public affairs
knowledge. Our scale measures of knowledge were related to subjects' estimates
of media impact on themselves, but only when the question about impact on
the self followed one asking about impact on other people. In responding to
three out of the four news events examined in these experiments, more
knowledgeable subjects adjusted their estimates of influence on themselves
downward after first answering the question asking them to contemplate effects
on others. This effect of knowledge on estimates of self-impact did not emerge,
on the other hand, when the question about media influence on oneself preceded
rather than followed the 'other' question.
Exactly why this occurred is an interesting matter to contemplate. Presumably
the first question in the series provides a judgmental anchor against which the
second estimate is then made. If this is so, then a judgment of relatively great
impact on others may provide a stronger anchor for a self-serving (i.e. lower)
estimate of impact on oneself, while an estimate of modest impact on oneself
fails to provide a comparably strong anchor for a subsequent self-serving (i.e.
higher) estimate of impact on others. In support of this view, the magnitude of
the third person effect was always largest (albeit not significantly so) in
those experimental conditions where the 'others' question was completed
first—possibly because a more extreme initial estimate of impact is generated
here than when the 'self question comes first (see Tables 1 and 2). Alternatively,
it may be that self-serving comparisons demanding more negative assessments
of others and those demanding more positive assessments of the self are not
entirely symmetrical. That is, it may be easier for subjects to distinguish
themselves favorably against others (as they would in the Others-then-Self
condition) than it is for them to distinguish others unfavorably against themselves
(as they would in the Self-then-Others condition). Of course, these matters
remain speculative at this point and should be informed by further research
replicating and extending the findings presented here.
Also of significance is the finding that the perceived personal importance of
an issue may exert an effect independent of, and even opposite to, the effect of
knowledge. This finding replicates in part previous research indicating that the
role of perceived importance may be to increase estimates of the effect of
messages on others (e.g. Mutz 1989). On the other hand, our results indicated
that estimates of impact on oneself also increased with greater personal importance.
Owing to this effect, we failed to find any increase in the overall third-person
effect differential corresponding to increased issue importance. In this connection, however, it is important to note that the three issues examined in
Experiment 2 were rated as being modest to low overall in their importance to
subjects (on a scale from 1 = not at all important to 7 = extremely important,
mean ratings were, for Clinton's policy reversals, 3.84; for the O.J. Simpson
QUESTION ORDER, CONTRAST AND KNOWLEDGE
139
trial, 2.60; and for charges against Michael Jackson, 2.08)—not the sort of 'hot'
issues that could be expected to elicit strong reactions. The self-reports of
personal importance gathered here may also be, at least in part, an artifactual
product of respondents' having just previously made estimates of the social
impact of various news events. That is, the tendency to rate the issue as
important may have resulted from having previously estimated the impact of
issue-related news events as being substantial.
Of course, personal importance is only one dimension of a larger construct,
involvement with the issue. Importance is frequently confounded, both theoretically and methodologically, with personal involvement and interest in issues,
and consequently it is difficult to isolate its independent effects in the literature.
Ego-involvement is perhaps the most powerful of the constructs in this area,
and so it would have been useful to have had more direct measures of it in the
present research. Along the same lines, it would have been helpful to have had
measures of partisan attitudes relative to the issues studied here, since it is
likely that such attitudes may themselves exert an influence on the perceptions
subjects report. In sum, it appears that further clarification of the role of issue
importance must lie with future research.
There are a number of other limitations to the present data that should be
borne in mind. Among these, perhaps the most critical is the fact that the
stimuli used in our experiment were not media messages per se: subjects read
descriptions of events and news coverage surrounding them and were asked to
estimate the impact of these events on themselves and others. It is possible
that references to events as opposed to news may have contributed to—or
attenuated—third-person effects. But it is worth noting in this connection that
to date studies have obtained third-person effects with a variety of stimuli
including specific messages (Perloff 1989), references to general classes of
content (Gunther 1995), and even general types of media effects (Tiedge et al.
1991). Another limitation to the data is the fact that our sample consisted
entirely of college undergraduates. College students are atypical of the general
population, both in terms of their news media use and their knowledge of
political affairs. This feature of the study probably presents fewer problems
with respect to interpretation of effects of question order and question contrast
than it does in relation to the impact of political knowledge. Finally, we have
confined ourselves in this research to examining perceptual differences—not
'real' differentials in media impact. As noted at the outset, there are good
theoretical reasons to believe that the perceptual phenomena described by the
third-person effect hypothesis have a number of important social consequences.
But those remain beyond the scope of the present study.
What our research clearly does contribute is some reassurance that the
perceptual differences so often noted in prior research have not stemmed
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INTERNATIONAL JOURNAL OF PUBLIC OPINION RESEARCH
primarily from question order effects, nor even from overt question contrast
effects. More substantively, our findings raise some interesting questions about
the role of knowledge and issue importance in mediating judgments about the
impact of the mass media.
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BIOGRAPHICAL NOTES
Vincent Price is chair of the Department of Communication Studies and faculty associate
at the Center for Political Studies in the Institute for Social Research at the University
of Michigan. He is the author of Public Opinion (Sage Publications, 1992). His research
focuses on mass communication, public opinion, and persuasion.
David Tewksbury is a doctoral candidate in the Interdepartmental Doctoral program
in Mass Communication at the University of Michigan. He has recently published in
the area of political communication {Progress in the Communication Sciences, in press)
and is interested in psychological processing of media messages.