This study confirms previous research that message desirability, with its new conceptualization, has a statistically significant and substantial linear relationship with the difference in perceived media influences on the self and on others, a relationship that some previous studies aimed to, but failed to find (e.g., Lambe & McLeod, 2005). Message desirability with the current conceptualization can explain more than a third of the third- or first- perception. It provides strong evidence that message desirability may be better served by being conceptualized from the perceptions of the subjects rather than the researchers. Yet the linear relationship does not guarantee a first-person perception. When message desirability is categorized into dichotomous values, desirable and undesirable, the expected first-person perception does not appear along the social distance conceptualized based on generality, while the third-person perception is quite strong. Along other dimensions of social distance, significant third-person perception also appears where a first-person perception is theoretically expected, such as along the dimension of gender. This is consistent with the conclusion of previous research that third-person perception is more robust. Self-image protection, which has been proposed as the underlying mechanism of the
third- or first-person perception (Jensen & Hurley, 2005; Perloff, 2002), may lend explanation to the weakness of the first-person perception in the present study. Although the letter to the editor is perceived as politically desirable by part of the respondents, those respondents still do not think that it will enhance their image to acknowledge being more influenced by the letter.
The findings also lead our attention to the moderation of message topic to the third- or first-person perception, which previous research has paid attention to (Lambe & M cLeod; Jensen & Hurley, 2005). Lo and Wei (2005) find that both males and females perceive males as being more influenced by Internet pornography, whereas in the current study, females are perceived by both genders as being more influenced by the political letter published in the state’s major newspaper. The current researcher attributes the variation between the findings of this research and Lo and W ei (2005) to the topic change of the experimental stimulus. Message topic may interact with message desirability in moderating the third- or first-person perception, generating strong first-person perception (Gunther & Thorson, 1992), no difference (this study along social distance in the dimension of generality), or even strong third-person perception (Park & Salmon, 2005) when the stimulus is desirable.
Social Distance
Based on argument of recent research (Lambe & McLeod, 2005; M eirick, 2004; Pan et al., 2005), an emphasis of this research is to conceptualize social distance in different dimensions and examine their relationship with the third- or first-person perception in a political election. The hypothetic linear relationship between social distance and the third- or first-person perception is partially supported in the dimension of generality. The perceived influence of the undesirable message significantly increases step by step as the social distance goes further from “you” to students in the university.
No such linear relationship is found in the other two dimensions measured in ordinal scales. The reason that social status makes almost no difference in the perceived influences may be that, living on the same campus, the respondents perceive students of other status as having not much distance. It also could be that the respondents perceive that this dimension of social distance has little relevance to the topic in question. Although Political position makes some differences in the perception, these differences betray that this dimension probably is not linearly from self to the others. Both “strongest supporters” of A and B, under the situations of both desirable and undesirable, tend to perceive that “people have no choice yet” are more influenced than the “general supporters” of A, who are more influenced than the “strong supporters” of A. No one perceives a difference in the influences on the supporters of B. Those judgments are seemly based on normal political knowledge rather than the self-other distance.
external factors’ impacts on social distance’s moderating function. Arguably, we can say that these data tend to support the hypotheses based on gender fully. Females show a strong first- person perception when the letter is desirable. W hen the letter is undesirable, although they do not show a third-person perception, the means of the perceived influences on both genders decrease by almost half respectively. Likewise, males show a strong third-person perception when the letter is both undesirable and desirable, but the mean of the perceived influence on both genders is much higher when the letter is desirable than when it is undesirable. Research has shown that some social groups are more likely to be perceived as susceptible to some special influences (Scharrer, 2002). If some factors not included in analysis such as the perception of females as being more easily influenced by political information are controlled, the pattern might show up exactly as expected. The same guess applies to ethnicity. If factors such as the concern of racial sensitivity or racial rights are controlled, the expected pattern may also appear. Previous research has also found age as an external factor to interact with message desirability and social distance in moderating the third-person perception (Lambe & McLeod, 2005).
In summary, the traditional conceptualization of social distance based on generality works best in the theoretical expected direction in this dataset. Other dimensions do not support or even challenge the theory in the election context. Research finds that respondents change their perceived social dance to the targeted other people when different reference groups are used (Reid & Hogg, 2005). IT might be interesting for future study to explore what the general rule for people to perceive the self-other distances that moderate their third-person perception is.