Rethinking the social distance corollary - Perceived likelihood of exposure and the third-person perception.

Researchers have proposed a social distance coronary to the third-person-pe rception to explain the common finding that as comparison groups become mor e different from the self or more generally described, the size of the thir d-person perception increases (i.e., media messages are perceived to have g reater negative impact on others than self). The two studies presented here investigate whether third;person-perceptions are influenced by social dist ance or perceived likelihood of exposure. We differentiate three ways of op erationalizing social distance and examine whether perceived impact increas es along each dimension of social distance. The results of our studies demo nstrated that perceived likelihood of exposure was a strong predictor of pe rceived impact, whereas the perceived social distance of the comparison gro up was not. These findings indicate that previous social distance findings may actually be an artifact of inferences about how likely comparison group s are to be exposed to the media content in question.