This study found that levels of likelihood to vote can be predicted by the third-person effect. Unlike past studies that treated support for censorship as the main consequence of the third-person effect, this study is the first to examine the direct political implications of the process. A judgment task experiment of 340 individuals who were shown four ads from the 2004 Bush and Kerry campaigns yielded support for both the perceptual and behavioral hypotheses. The authors present paternalism as a theoretical rational for this occurrence. If individuals feel that others who are less knowledgeable or politically sophisticated than they are might be more likely to be persuaded by political advertising, they in turn would attempt to compensate for other's perceived ignorance by taking political action such as voting.
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