When third-person perceptions motivate correction: political identity, anticipated guilt, and responses to political...

Drawing on the third-person effect (TPE), this study examines how partisan identity, source cues, and comparison targets shape third-person perceptions (TPP) of political misinformation and their associations with corrective intentions during the 2022 South Korean presidential election. The study further investigates anticipated guilt as a potential emotional mechanism associated with the relationship between partisan sources and corrective intentions. An online experiment (N = 479) showed that individuals exposed to counter-attitudinal misinformation exhibited stronger TPP than those exposed to pro-attitudinal misinformation, particularly when evaluating out-group rather than in-group targets. Partisan source effects emerged only among participants exposed to counter-attitudinal misinformation. Moreover, TPP involving out-group-but not in-group-targets was positively associated with anticipated guilt, which was in turn associated with stronger corrective intentions. Moderated serial mediation analyses further revealed that, among participants whose preferred candidate was targeted by misinformation, exposure to an out-group source was indirectly associated with stronger corrective intentions through TPP involving out-group targets and anticipated guilt. No corresponding indirect association was observed among participants exposed to misinformation targeting their non-preferred candidate. The implications of the findings are discussed.