Getting to the source of the illusion of consensus

Consensus between informants is a valuable cue to a claim’s epistemic value, when informants’ beliefs are developed independently of each other. Recent work (Yousif et al., 2019) described an illusion of consensus such that people did not generally discriminate between the epistemic warrant of true consensus, where a majority claim is supported by multiple independent sources, and false consensus arising from repeated claims from the same source. Three experiments tested a novel account of the illusion of consensus; that it arises when people are unsure about the independence of the primary sources on which informant claims are based. When this independence relationship was ambiguous we foundevidence for the illusion. However, when steps were taken to highlight the independence between data sources in the true consensus conditions, and confidence in a claim was measured against a no consensus baseline (where there was an equal number of reports supporting and opposing a claim), we eliminated the illusion of consensus. Under these conditions, more weight was given to claims based on true consensus than false consensus. These findings show that although the illusion of consensus is prevalent, people do have the capacity to distinguish between true and false consensus.

Perceiving Immigrants as a Threat: A Motivational Approach to False Consensus

False consensus, or biased projection of one’s opinion onto others, has repeatedly been described by political communication scholars as a derivative of selective exposure to attitude-consistent information. This study proposes a distinctive approach to understanding the phenomenon by suggesting “perceived threat” as a motivational factor that contributes to self-serving estimates of public opinion. Based on a nationally representative sample of U.S. adults, we test a path model in which political ideology relates to false consensus regarding the issue of immigration through cognitive assessments of communication environment and perceived immigration threat. Results suggest that the relationship between cognition and false consensus may not be direct but instead works through motivational factors when one perceives threat, and that conservatives are more sensitive to outgroup threat and thus are more likely to overestimate public consensus for their attitudes on immigration than their ideological counterparts. Implications of these findings are discussed.

How Strong is the Association Between Social Media Use and False Consensus?

In series of studies, we sought to assess the extent to which social media use was related to the false consensus effect. Study 1 (N = 493) and Study 2 (N = 364, preregistered) assessed the relationship between social media use and the false consensus effect for three psychological characteristics: political attitudes, personality traits, and fundamental social motives. Study 3 (N = 875) explored lay beliefs about the strength of the relationships between social media use and false consensus effects. Across studies, we found that heavier use of social media was associated with stronger false consensus effects. However, these effects were smaller in magnitude than lay beliefs about these linkages.

Strategic Communications: A Coorientation Approach in Russian and American Universities

This study focuses on two countries that often dominate international public diplomacy, and examines how Russian and American youth view the current relationship between Russia and the United States. The article promotes research on the theory of co-orientation and proves that coordination can be one of the theoretical foundations in the field of strategic communication. The study first identifies the main issues affecting the relations between the two countries. Then, using the survey methodology, data on these questions is collected from respondents from the United States and Russia. Four main scenarios of co-orientation are considered : monolithic consensus, pluralistic disregard, false consensus, and disagreement. The results of the study show that the type of coordination scenario that best characterizes the relationship between the United States and Russia is disagreement. The results also highlight the status of strategic communication as an interdisciplinary science with the psychological roots of coorientation theory.

Cognitive Strategies for Peer Judgments

How do people make judgments about characteristics of their peers? We investigate what cognitive strategies underlie peer judgments, what group-level patterns of judgments do these strategies produce, and whether they generate accurate judgments. We develop a general model that allows for comparison of different cognitive strategies including ego-projection, frequency-based, memory, and inference strategies. We apply it on a unique data set including self-reports and peer judgments of substance use among homeless youth (N=239). We find evidence for the adaptive use of strategies that are most appropriate given the information available from one’s personal experience and social environment. On the group level, the pattern of judgments sometimes resembles false consensus, but overall shows a high level of accuracy.

A Replication of Stern, West, and Schmitt (2014) Indicates Less False Consensus Among Liberals Than Conservatives, But No False Uniqueness

Stern, West, and Schmitt (2014) reported that liberals display truly false uniqueness in contrast to moderates and conservatives who display truly false consensus. We conducted a close, preregistered replication of Stern et al.’s (2014) research with a large sample ( N = 1,005). Liberals, moderates, and conservatives demonstrated the truly false consensus effect by overestimating ingroup consensus. False consensus was strongest among conservatives, followed by moderates, and weakest among liberals. However, liberals did score higher than moderates and conservatives on the need for uniqueness scale, which partially accounted for the difference in false consensus between liberals and conservatives. Overall, our data align with Stern et al.’s (2014) in demonstrating left-right ideological differences in the overestimation of ingroup consensus but fall short of illustrating a liberal illusion of uniqueness.

Characteristics of Participants and Satisficing Tendency in Online Surveys Using a Sample Provider

A panel sample provider is a service that acts as an intermediary between a researcher and a survey monitor supplier in a web-based survey, and earns a transaction fee by providing the supplier with information on the survey that the researcher has registered and set up. In this report, we focused on LUCID (https://luc.id/), the world's largest panel sample provider and conducted a simple experimental online survey using LUCID in Japan, the U. S., the U. K., and China and examine participants' tendency to engage in satisficing when they do not pay due attention to the survey and its effect on their tendency to respond to an experimental task of “false consensus effect.” The percentage of satisficers who violated the instructions both times was high for both tasks in JP and CN. The effect sizes of one's own choice for satisficers were relatively smaller (though not absolutely small) than those for compliers and converts. These results show both the possibility that satisficing biases experimental results and the possibility that it can be corrected in a more appropriate direction by alerting.