False Consensus Effect
Understanding the False Consensus Belief Effect
The False Consensus Effect refers to the tendency for people to overestimate the degree to which others agree with them. People readily guess their own opinions, beliefs and predilections, to be more prevalent in the general public than they really are.
Sherman, Presson, and Chassin (1984) suggested three types of explanations for false consensus effects:
- self-enhancement,
- motivation to view the other as oneself, and
- need for social support and validation.
Their results indicated a greater likelihood of false consensus when judges were given success feedback (self-enhancement motivations) about their task performance.
To demonstrate the false consensus effect, Ross, Greene, and House (1977) asked Stanford students to engage in a number of activities, one of which was to walk around the Stanford campus with a big sign reading “Repent!” Students either agreed to engage in this activity or refused and then were asked to estimate the proportion of Stanford students who would agree.
The students who agreed made an average estimate that 63.5 percent of Stanford students would agree, whereas, among those who refused, the average estimate was 23.3 percent. That result led to Mullen and colleagues' definition of the false consensus effect:
“False Consensus Effect refers to an egocentric bias that occurs when people estimate consensus for their own behavior. Specifically, the false consensus hypothesis holds that people who engage in a given behavior will estimate that behavior to be more common than it is estimated to be by the people who engage in the alternative behavior” (Mullen et al. 1985, 262).
Social scientists have described the notion of false consensus as an egotistic bias to believe that others in a group of which one is a member will respond like oneself—for example, in agreeing or refusing to engage in a particular behavior or in endorsing or rejecting a particular attitude or opinion statement.
The false consensus bias may be an attempt to protect our self-esteem Opens in new window, by assuming that our opinions are correct and are shared by most of the others. That is, the attribution that other people share our opinions, serves as an affirmation and a confirmation of the correctness of our views. However, this overestimation of the trustworthiness of our own ideas, can be a significant hindrance to rational thinking, and if people operate under the false assumption that their beliefs are widely held, the false consensus bias could serve as a justification for imposing one’s beliefs on others.
related literatures:
- Cf. Michelle R. Nario-Redmond/Nyla R. Branscombe in: Basic and Applied Social Psychology, 18/1996, pp. 347.
- Gary L. Wells/Igor Gavanski, “False Consensus Belief Effect”, in: Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 56/1989, pp. 161-169.
