False Consensus: Don't Assume Your Thoughts are Widely Shared

Max Hightower, a 17-year-old transgender male high school student in Sherman, Texas had been cast for a lead male role in his school’s production of Oklahoma!  Then he was told by his principal that he could not play that role because he was born a girl. The principal may have assumed the community agreed with this policy, having heard from some parents about their concerns and given the attention to LGBTQ issues that has roiled Texas and many school systems across the country.  Yet he assumed a community consensus that didn’t exist.  Those who disagreed soon flooded a school board meeting speaking in support of Max and several girls who had lost male roles.  In a unanimous vote, the school board reversed the decision and issued a formal apology. 

It’s not uncommon to assume (wrongly as it turns out) agreement between oneself and others.   It’s called the false consensus bias. We assume, for example, that a friend shares our views on a subject, that others must like the same music we do, that our dinner guests will like the foods we like, that people are as wary of vaccines as we are. 

In many situations, assuming a false consensus is pretty harmless.  So what if a first date turns out to disagree with our “obvious” conclusions on global warming or we end up isolated in a family vote on a decision we thought was a “no-brainer”?  In some situations, however, assuming a false consensus can be quite harmful.  Hate and sometimes violence develop when a group assumes its views on politics, race or religion are widely shared – and should be - but they’re not.

In Why We Act: Turning Bystanders into Moral Rebels, Amherst College professor Catherine Sanderson suggests bullying may continue when onlookers assume their peers think it’s OK and that college men may think sexist behavior and even sexual assault are acceptable because they underestimate how much their male peers disapprove.  They may also conclude that excessive drinking is the norm, that their friends approve of it even when they don’t.  In some cases, Sanderson notes, people may also succumb to the “bystander effect,” hanging back to allow dangerous behavior when they might have intervened.

On a simple level, we can understand false consensus as the result of one or both of two causes.  We just misperceive how others think and feel and/or we project how we think and feel onto others. Several explanations have been offered, such as:

·       Limited Exposure: If all someone is exposed to by their choice of friends, groups, social media behavior and Internet searching supports a belief, they might well assume others must share the “obvious” truths that they do.  Conspiracy theories arise from such selective exposure.

·       The Availability Bias: It’s easier to retrieve (i.e. find available) memories of facts, dates, events and behavior that fits with our assumptions than those that don’t.  Those who steadfastly believe that the MMR vaccine causes autism in children can more easily cite examples of autistic children that got the MMR vaccine than the vast majority of non-autistic kids who were vaccinated.

·       Overconfidence: the more “evidence” we find the more confident we may become that what we think “must” be shared.  Fans of a team that lost a close game can easily call up missed calls by referees and have absolutely no doubt they’re correct and others would agree because “it’s so obvious.”

The false consensus bias is potent but preventable. In one study, 143 college students watched a film of campus scenes involving alcohol.  Some then received information about misperceptions – that people think excessive consumption of alcohol is more common than it actually is and how such misperceptions affect behavior.  Others received only information about and ways to avoid excessive drinking.  Four to six months later, the former group consumed much less alcohol per week than the latter.  Looking for evidence that you may have misperceptions and inviting others to help you do so is useful.  If your group is small, poll each member (privately to avoid social pressure to conform) to see if they support what appears to you to be a group’s consensus.

In a study during the 1980 presidential election, people overestimated the popularity of their preferred candidate, assuming that he was preferred by the vast majority of voters. If you can entertain you just might be wrong, you could seek disconfirming evidence, find and learn from people who disagree and not get so angry if the election proves you wrong.  This false consensus effect was both evident and too often uncorrected in the 2020 presidential election.

Intellectual humility and a tolerance of uncertainty are thus important antidotes to the false consensus bias. “I can live with doubt and uncertainty and not knowing,” Nobel physicist Richard Feynman said. “In order to make progress, one must leave the door to the unknown ajar.”

Photo Credit: anagilemind.net