False consensus effect: what is it and what does it reveal about us?

In this world we are many people and each one of us thinks differently. In the same way that no two people are the same, neither are two minds the same, but they are relatively similar in terms of beliefs, predilections and so on.

However, sometimes we think that there are more people who think the same as us than who really are. This is basically what has been called false consensus effect, which we will discuss further below.

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What is the false consensus effect?

The false consensus effect is a cognitive bias, which consists of a tendency to think that there are many people who think or think in a similar way to oneself. That is, it consists of overestimating the degree of agreement that others have with the same ideas, attitudes or behaviors.

People want to feel supported, for this reason it is common to assume that their own beliefs, predilections and habits are also shared or carried out by other people. In this way, by thinking that you are not the only one who thinks or acts in a certain way, you maximize your self-confidence.

This phenomenon is not pathological nor does it pose a real problem by itself. Everyone wants to think that their way of being is not 'weird' or 'not bad'. What could be considered as somewhat problematic of the effect is to think that there are many more people who think in a certain way, thinking that there is a more than extensive consensus.

History of the phenomenon and research

Although it was not Sigmund Freud who gave it the name 'false consensus effect' nor did he give it a specific definition, the Austrian psychoanalyst did raise, at the beginning of the last century, some hypotheses that could explain why people 'find' support, greater than it actually is, for their opinions and way of acting. be. According to, this phenomenon was a defense mechanism known as projection, that is, attributing to others, for better or for worse, their own ideas and feelings.

However, it was in the 1970s when the delimitation of this concept was carried out, in addition to being addressed in research. Researchers Lee Ross, David Greene, and Pamela House conducted a study in 1977 in which they asked college students to answer two questions:

First, the students were asked if they would agree to hang a sign saying 'repent' and walk across campus with it. Some of these students agreed to wear it, others preferred not to wear it. After this, they were asked to estimate how many people believed that they had answered the same as them, that is, that they had said that they would carry or not, depending on the case, the aforementioned sign.

Both the students who had said they were not going to take it and those who were willing to do so they tended to overestimate the number of people who would do what they said. In the case of the students who had agreed to carry the sign, on average they calculated that it would be 60% of the students who would also agree to do so. In the group of students who had refused to wear it, they said that only 27% of the students would dare to wear that poster.

Why does this cognitive bias occur?

There are several hypotheses that have tried to explain why people overestimate the support that their opinions and other aspects of their mind and behavior have in society as a whole.

In the first place, it has been suggested that spending time with people who actually think in a similar way or share a lot in common with oneself can reinforce the misconception that there are many people who also they think alike. It can also be said that thinking that we are not the only ones who think this way is a key factor in building and maintaining self-esteem.

Another approach, related to what has been previously commented on Freudian projection, is that the false consensus effect arises as a defense mechanism. It is a spontaneous and automated behavior that seeks to protect one's self-confidence. Nobody wants to be the one who is wrong, and one of the best ways to 'confirm' that you are right is to find support, although overestimated, in the other individuals that make up the complex society that has given us touched to live

Searching for a social circle in which the same opinion is shared or the same visions of reality are shared is a way to protect the delicate emotional balance, in addition to reinforcing social relationships with the peer group.

It should be said that another of the aspects that is of vital importance in the appearance of this phenomenon is that of that there is a lack of information, not necessarily bad, regarding the real support that the opinions have own. The normal thing is that when having certain beliefs the individual looks for opinions that follow the same line, ignoring those that can refute or demonstrate how much support you really have (reasoning motivated).

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Does everyone show it?

Although, as we were commenting previously, the effect of the false consensus is not something from another world, given that the entire Everyone wants to find great support, even if they don't really have it, it must be said that, sometimes, not all people do. manifest. This is where the absence of this effect can be related to the presence of psychopathology, or a thought pattern that could end up being pathological.

Tabachnik's group discovered, in 1983, that certain people did not have this tendency to exaggerate endorsements in others. In fact, it seems that they believed that nobody supported them, or that their ideas were completely removed from the train of thought of the majority of the people.

Tabachnik conducted a study whose sample was made up of people who had been diagnosed with depression and others who did not have the disorder. These people were asked to judge a series of attributes about themselves and also how others perceived those same attributes.

The results showed that subjects with depression judged their attributes differently compared to those without the diagnosis. This can be related to the presence of biases present in mood disorders that go in the opposite line to the effect of the false consensus described here.

Real Life Examples of the False Consensus Effect

One of the clearest examples in which this phenomenon can be found is in the sports field. Many people have a favorite soccer team and it is very common for all of them to believe that their team is the most popular in the world. neighborhood, city or region in which they live, regardless of the statistics or how full the stadiums are when they play game.

It is also possible to see it in politics. It is common to think that one's own ideology or, at least, some points that make it up, are widely supported for the rest of the citizenry. This is especially visible when a highly politicized person has a profile on a social network and sees that most of her followers think the same way.

To end the article, we are going to mention a case of this real effect that has been related to the economic crisis that arose in 2008. It is thought that one of the determining factors in the economic destabilization in the markets was that this year many investors made inaccurate predictions of how the markets would evolve in the years coming.

They said this thinking that other investors would take the same actions in the markets, that is, they believed in a false consensus. Due to this situation, the markets evolved in an unexpected way, ending in the economic disaster that we all know.

Bibliographic references:

• Polaino-Lorente, A., & Villamisar, D. TO. g. (1984). Experimental analysis of the motivational and cognitive deficits of ((Learned Helplessness)) in a sample of non-depressive adolescents. Psychology Notebooks, 11, 7-34.
• Ross L., Greene D. & House, P. (1977). The false consensus effect: an egocentric bias in social perception and attribution processes. Journal of Experimental Social Psychology 13, 279-301.
• Tabachnik, N., Crocker, J., & Alloy, L. b. (1983). Depression, social comparison, and the false-consensus effect. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 45(3), 688–699. https://doi.org/10.1037/0022-3514.45.3.688