I Shake My Head But They Will Nod: On the Relevance of Persuasion Knowledge and Reactance for Third-Person Perceptions

• In Event: Persuasion I: Strategies

Abstract

Third-person perceptions (TPP) do not always occur. Their most important predictor is the perceived undesirability of media messages (Perloff, 1999). Later, Eveland and McLeod (1999) were first to link the social desirability of pro- and antisocial media messages and perceptions of being persuaded within TPP. Nevertheless, persuasion research clearly links persuasion knowledge with reactance (Brehm, 1966), but there is almost no research on the role of persuasion knowledge and reactance within the theoretical framework of TPP.
To shed light on this important antecedent of TPP we conducted a series of two independent experiments on two different topics.
Results of the experiments confirm the assumptions of Eveland and McLeod (1999): social desirability influences TPP via persuasion knowledge. Moreover, the present study adds another mediator, reactance, to this indirect effect.

Authors

• Sebastian Scherr, LMU Munich

• Philipp Mueller, U of Mainz