Effect of the third person effect - 2
On the effect of the third person effect: Perceived influence media coverage and
residential mobility intentions
This study explores how perceptions of, and beliefs about, the influence of media
coverage of localities affect the desire to move away from these localities. It is
argued that regardless of whether people’s perceptions of where they live are really
shaped by media coverage, if people believe others are affected by this coverage, they
are more likely to consider relocation. Specifically, we wish to investigate whether
the perceived stigmatization of peripheral development towns in Israel has an impact
on the desire of their residents to stay or leave, over and above the disaffection with
actual living conditions in these communities.
The third person effect: a bias or an effect?
It is a well-known finding of media research that people perceive others as
more influenced by the mass media than they themselves are. As W. Phillip Davison
(1983) put it, people believe that the media’s greatest impact “will not be on ‘me’ or
‘you,’ but on ‘them’ – the third persons” (p. 3). His landmark article and many
studies that followed defined the “third person effect” as the perceptual gap between
the beliefs about the effects of media on the self and on others (for a recent review see
Perloff, 2002). A meta-analysis (Paul, Salwen & Dupagne, 2000) investigating 121
separate effects found robust empirical support for this third person thesis.
But whereas the gap between perceptions of media influence on ‘me’ vs.
‘them’ is well documented, it is unclear why this perceptual gap is referred to as an
“effect”. Prima facie, this body of research tells us not about media effects, but rather
about misconceptions of media effects based on self biases. Indeed, Perloff (2002)
has suggested that one way to conceptualize the third person effect is as “ a subset of
a universal human tendency to perceive the self in ways that make us look good or at
Convention