An Examination Of Third-person Effect In The Context Of Contoversial Product Advertising

This research seeks to determine if there is a third-person effect in the realm of controversial product advertising. A questionnaire was designed based on previous research and distributed to a convenience sample of college students at the University of Central Florida. Participants were asked to rate their perceived levels of personal offense to product categories as well as the expected levels of other groups of people. The results show that there is indeed a significant third-person effect recognized for all product categories except for racial extremist groups. A first-person effect was shown to be present for the category of racial extremist groups. This research also suggests that a concealed third-person effect may have been present in previous studies of this nature that obtained high levels of offense attributed to the self. Discussions of the findings, implications for marketers and advertisers, limitations to the study, as well as suggestions for future research are also posited