Third-Person Perception, Optimistic Bias, Safer-Sex Campaigns, and Sexual Risk-Taking Among Minority "At-Risk" Youth

Recent third-person perception articles suggest that optimistic bias is the mechanism underlying the perceptual bias, but fail to empirically test the assumption. Minority "at-risk" youth are neglected in both literatures, despite the fact that they are frequently the target audience for the resulting campaigns. This study sought to bridge a gap between communication and psychology by determining to what extent third-person perception and optimistic bias co-vary in a sample of 231 urban, minority "at-risk" youth in grades 4 through 12 in urban New Jersey public schools. Findings confirm that third-person perception and optimistic bias are present in the sample. Contrary to the position that optimistic bias causes third-person perception, the findings suggest that a small inverse relationship emerged: 51% of the middle school and high school students surveyed exhibited third-person perceptions (believing they were less influenced by televised safer-sex messages than were their peers), and these students were less optimistic about there chances of becoming HIV infected than their peers; 34% exhibited first-person perceptions (believing they were more influenced by the messages than were peers), and these students were more optimistic than their peers were concerning HIV infection. The remaining 15% perceived no difference between themselves and peers in terms of message influence. Most students (89%) exhibited optimistic bias regarding their chances of avoiding HIV infection in the future. Contains 97 references and 4 tables of data. (Author/RS) Reproductions supplied by EDRS are the best that can be made from the original document. Third-Person Perception, Optimistic Bias, Safer-Sex Campaigns, and Sexual Risk-Taking Among Minority "At-Risk" Youth John Chapin Penn State University U.S. DEPARTMENT OF EDUCATION Office of Educational Research and Improvement EDUCATIONAL RESOURCES INFORMATION CENTER (ERIC) This document has been reproduced as received from the person or organization originating it. Minor changes have been made to improve reproduction quality. ° Points of view or opinions stated in this document do not necessarily represent official OERI position or policy. PERMISSION TO REPRODUCE AND DISSEMINATE THIS MATERIAL HAS BEEN GRANTED BY TO THE EDUCATIONAL INFORMATION RESOURCES FORMATION CENTER (ERIC) Presented at the annual meeting of the Association for Education in Journalism and Mass Communication (AEJMC), New Orleans: August 1999. The author gratefully acknowledges the assistance of Lisa Henriksen (Stanford University), Robert Kubey (Rutgers University), Linda Steiner (Rutgers University), Neil Weinstein (Rutgers University), and Richard Perloff (Cleveland State University) with previous drafts of this paper. 2 BEST COPY AVAILABLE