Perceived message influence and hispanic women: The disappearance of self-other perceptual bias

Ye Sun, Jakob D. Jensen, Lisa M. Guntzviller, Miao Liu

Research output: Contribution to journalArticlepeer-review

Abstract

The third-person effect (TPE) hypothesis states that people typically perceive the media messages to have greater influence on others than on themselves. Though this self-other perceptual bias has been shown to be robust across a variety of message contexts, past research has typically utilized Caucasian college student samples. The current study addresses this shortcoming in the literature by examining whether the TPE hypothesis holds for low-income, low-education, Spanish-speaking female adults with regard to the perceived effects of health news coverage. Our findings showed that most participants chose “equal to others” when estimating health news effects on themselves instead of “less than others” or “more than others.” Results from ordinal logistic regression showed that the propensity toward TPE was related to optimistic bias and certain indicators of acculturation. Our findings suggest the need for future TPE research in Hispanic populations and further efforts to investigate TPE from an intercultural perspective.

Original languageEnglish (US)
Pages (from-to)366-382
Number of pages17
JournalHispanic Journal of Behavioral Sciences
Volume36
Issue number3
DOIs
StatePublished - Aug 13 2014
Externally publishedYes

Keywords

  • Acculturation
  • Hispanic population
  • Ordinal logistic regression
  • Perceived health news effects
  • Third-person effect

ASJC Scopus subject areas

  • Social Psychology
  • Cultural Studies
  • Anthropology
  • Linguistics and Language

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