False consensus effect
From Psychology Wiki
Community portal · Tasks to do · News · Help
Clinical · Educational · Ind&Org · Other fields · Professional · Transpersonal · World
Assessment |
Biopsychology |
Comparative |
Cognitive |
Developmental |
Language
Personality |
Philosophy |
Research Methods |
Social |
Statistics
Social Psychology: Add · Specialist · Topics · Here
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 as being more prevalent in the general public than they really are.
This bias is commonly present in a group setting where one thinks the collective opinion of their own group matches that of the larger population. Since the members of a group reach a consensus and rarely encounter those who dispute it, they tend to believe that everybody thinks the same way.
There is no single cause for this cognitive bias; the availability heuristic and self-serving bias have been suggested as at least partial underlying factors.
[edit] See also
- Attributional bias
- Overconfidence effect
- Lake Wobegon effect
- List of cognitive biases
- List of famous Minnesotans (Hidden Hometown Heroes)
[edit] References
- 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.
[edit] External links
| This page uses content from the English-language version of Wikipedia. The original article was at False consensus effect. The list of authors can be seen in the page history. As with Psychology Wiki, the text of Wikipedia is available under the GNU Free Documentation License. |
