The third-person effect, which is people’s tendency to think that other people are susceptible to persuasion. I am a savvy consumer; you are a knucklehead who can be duped into buying Budweiser by a pair of boobs. I evaluate arguments rationally; you listen to whoever is shouting the loudest. I won’t be swayed by a blog post; you will.
This is a stupid and condescending thing to think, and yet we all think it, and perhaps scientists especially so. So it’s no wonder that we get upset when we hear arguments we dislike — we foolishly fear that those arguments will win over all the dummies who populate our big dumb world.
https://experimentalhistory.substack.com/p/the-dance-of-the-naked-emperors
Ten years ago Davison formulated the third-person effect hypothesis, a novel approach to the study of public opinion. Davison proposed that individuals typically assume that mass communications exert a stronger impact on others than the self, and he derived some interesting ideas from this notion. Over the past decade, a number of studies have tested predictions derived from Davison's formulation. This paper reviews and synthesizes research on the third-person effect. A systematic review of third-person effect studies indicates that there is abundant support for the notion that individuals assume that communications exert a stronger influence on others than on the self. However, the third-person effect does not emerge in all circumstances and for all people. The effect appears to be particularly likely to emerge when the message contains recommendations that are not perceived to be personally beneficial, when individuals perceive that the issue is personally important, and when they perceive that the source harbors a negative bias.