Yujin Heo (Ph.D., University of South Carolina) is an Assistant Professor in the Department of Advertising/Public Relations at the Pennsylvania State University. Her research encompasses strategic communication, media psychology, and media effects. She investigates how the evolving media landscape primarily influences information processing and how message features impact human attitudes and behaviors. Her research has been published in the Journal of Computer-Mediated Communication, Mass Communication and Society, Journalism & Mass Communication Quarterly, International Journal of Public Opinion Research, and Journal of Health Communication, among others.
Two major challenges have limited the advance of our knowledge about people’s bias in perceived polling effects compared with actual polling effects. The first challenge comes from a methodological difficulty in measuring the gap between perceived and actual polling effects. Second, two contradicting polling effects (i.e. bandwagon and underdog effect) cancel out each other at the aggregate level, making reported findings shrink. In this talk, I will present how we addressed these challenges and how we developed a method to systematically evaluate the gap between perceived and actual polling effects on the self. Two sets of two-wave panel surveys (total N = 1,001) were employed. Drawing on the literature on false uniqueness bias, motivated reasoning, and impression management theory, we expected people to underestimate the polling effects on themselves when their preexisting attitudes are weakened, but not when reinforced by the poll. Our two studies confirmed this pattern, observed in both cases that experienced bandwagon and underdog effects of the poll. Theoretical and practical implications will be discussed.