摘要：Past research has shown that people consistently believe that others are more easily manipulated by external influences than they themselves are---a phenomenon called the ``third-person effect'' (Davison, 1983). The present research investigates whether support for public policies aimed at changing behavior using incentives and other decision ``nudges'' is affected by this bias. Across two studies, we phrased justification for public policy initiatives using either the second- or third-person plural. In Study 1, we found that support for policies is higher when their justification points to people in general rather than the general ``you'', and in Study 2 we found that this former phrasing also improves support compared to a no-justification control condition. Policy support is mediated by beliefs about the likelihood of success of the policies (as opposed to beliefs about the policies' unintended consequences), and, in the second-person condition, is inversely related to a sense of personal agency. These effects suggest that the third-person effect holds true for nudge-type and incentive-based public policies, with implications for their popular support.
关键词：third-person effect; public policy; decision architecture; incentives; attitudes.
