Third-Person Effect

QUOTE

Leonardo da Vinci once said…

“The greatest deception men suffer is from their own opinions.”

(Italian polymath)

CONCEPT

Third-Person Effect

The Third-Person Effect is a psychological phenomenon where individuals believe that others are more influenced by media messages than they are themselves.

People tend to think that mass communication—such as advertisements, propaganda, or news reports—affects others more strongly, while they remain immune to its influence.

This bias can lead to underestimating how media impacts one's own beliefs and overestimating its effect on others.

STORY

Can’t Fool Me … Says the Fool?

On the evening of October 30, 1938, millions of Americans tuned their radios to CBS for what they thought would be ordinary Sunday night programming. Instead, they heard a chilling series of news bulletins: explosions on Mars, mysterious objects falling to Earth, and terrifying reports of an alien invasion in Grover's Mill, New Jersey.

Panic began to ripple through households as the narrator described Martian war machines unleashing deadly heat rays on helpless citizens.

Unbeknownst to most listeners, the broadcast was a dramatization of H.G. Wells' novel “The War of the Worlds,” orchestrated by a young Orson Welles and his Mercury Theatre on the Air. The realistic presentation was intended as a Halloween eve thriller, not a hoax.

As newspapers hit the stands the next morning, sensational headlines proclaimed nationwide hysteria.

Stories abounded of frantic citizens fleeing their homes, clogging highways, and overwhelming police stations with calls. The media painted a picture of a populace duped en masse, easily manipulated by the power of radio. Ironically, these reports were largely exaggerated. Subsequent investigations found that while some panic occurred, it was neither as widespread nor as intense as initially reported.

The real drama unfolded in the aftermath.

People who hadn't even heard the broadcast believed that others had been fooled, not themselves. This belief fed into a moral panic about the influence of mass media. Politicians and community leaders demanded stricter regulations to protect the supposedly gullible public from dangerous broadcasts. The Federal Communications Commission launched inquiries, and Welles was summoned to explain himself.

Orson Welles addressed the nation, expressing disbelief at the unintended chaos. “I had no idea the broadcast would have such an effect,” he confessed.

The incident became a defining moment in media history, not because of actual widespread panic, but because of the perception that others were so easily influenced.