Henriksen and Flora (1999) Revisited—A Literature Review on Third-Person Effects and Children/Adolescents

Abstract

In this literature review on TPE (third-person effects) and the behavioral consequences on children, the research questions posed are how the body of knowledge has evolved since the first empirical evidence of TPE among children and what knowledge gaps that remain. The traceable developments are two: (1) Compared to the vast amount of articles on TPE in general, the 59 identified on the topic of children are few and two thirds actually focus on adolescents/young adults rather than children. The reason put forward for studying younger children is the urge to prevent risky behavior through media literacy programs or pro-social advertisements; and (2) The studies have not primarily addressed results to support occurrence of TPE among children. Rather they support parental TPE or among the adolescents that TPE and reverse TPE occur due to certain kind of media content. The discussion on knowledge gaps that remain follow three themes: (1) Differentiations between self and others are in psychological studies implied to occur among children between the ages of 3-4 years old, yet no study address how children develop TPE; (2) There is a tendency to follow the more general development within TPE research with the renewed interest in behavioral consequences. But the primary behavioral consequence studied in TPE in general and within studies of TPE and children is support for censorship. Few studies address "real" behavioral consequences like parental mediation; and (3) There is also a need for more theoretically coherent research on the importance of social distance.