Title: | Rethinking the Social Distance Corollary : Perceived Likelihood of Expsoure and the Third-Person Perception; Perceived Likelihood of Expsoure and the Third-Person Perception |
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Authors and Corporations: | , , , |
In: | Communication Research, 26, 1999, 3, p. 275-302 |
published: |
SAGE Publications
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Media Type: | Article, E-Article |
Physical Description: | 275-302 |
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ISSN: |
0093-6502
1552-3810 |
DOI: | 10.1177/009365099026003001 |
published in: | Communication Research |
Language: | English |
Subjects: | |
Collection: | SAGE Publications (CrossRef) |
<jats:p> Researchers have proposed a social distance corollary to the third-person perception to explain the common finding that as comparison groups become more different from the self or more generally described, the size of the third-person perception increases (i.e., media messages are perceived to have greater negative impact on others than self). The two studies presented here investigate whether third-person perceptions are influenced by social distance or perceived likelihood of exposure. We differentiate three ways of operationalizing social distance and examine whether perceived impact increases along each dimension of social distance. The results of our studies demonstrated that perceived likelihood of exposure was a strong predictor of perceived impact, whereas the perceived social distance of the comparison group was not. These findings indicate that previous social distance findings may actually be an artifact of inferences about how likely comparison groups are to be exposed to the media content in question. </jats:p> |