HME文献16 Predicting pluralistic ignorance The hostile media perception and its consequences.pdfVIP

PREDICTING PLURALISTICIGNORANCE: THEHOSTILEMEDIAPERCEPTION AND ITS CONSEQUENCES By Albert C. Guntker and Stella Ckik-Yun Ckia - This studyfocused on media coverage of a controversial issue-the use of primates in laboratory research-to examine pluralistic ignorance, the potentialfor public misjudgment ofpublic opinion. W ehypothesized that people on both sides of the issue would find news coverage relatively disagreeable to their ownpoint of view (therelative hostile media percep- tion). W e also expected tofind that perceived public opinion would be influenced by personal opinions (theprojection bias) and by perceived news slant (thepersuasive press inference)and that, becauseof the hostile media perception, these latter twofactors would push perceived public opinion in contrary directions. Datafrom a national probability sample (N=402) indicated support for all three hypotheses. In addition, along with an aggregate perception of unfavorable news coverage wefound that people substantially overestimated public opposition to the use of pri- mates in research. The resultssuggest thatperceptions of the slant ofpress coverage can predict collective misjudgments of public opinion. Introduction It is not uncommon for people to form erroneous impressions of what other people think. Studies have shown misjudgments of public