The false consensus effect : projection or conformity?
Abstract/Contents
- Abstract
- The false consensus effect (FCE) is one of the most frequently cited phenomena in the social sciences and is widely presumed to illustrate how attitudes can shape perceptions. Yet, rarely have researchers directly tested this presumption. The purpose of this research is to address this gap in the literature. I begin with a review of the mechanisms presently thought to account for the FCE, formalizing them in causal diagrams that make explicit the mediational and moderational stories implicit in the explanations. Then, I describe what evidence exists for each of these explanations. And, finally, I report the results of four studies that tested the causal direction of the FCE. Study 1 manipulated participants' attitudes and found no impact of the resulting attitude change on perceptions of others' attitudes. Study 2 employed instrumental variable analysis to estimate the impact of participants' attitudes on their perceptions of others' attitudes and found no such impact. Study 3 tested an alternative explanation of the FCE: conformity to perceived social norms. Consistent with this claim, a manipulation of perceptions of others' attitudes influenced people's own attitudes. Applying covariance structure modeling to longitudinal data, Study 4 found evidence that perceptions of others' attitudes influence participants' own attitudes but no evidence that people's own attitudes shape perceptions of others' attitudes. Thus, instead of documenting attitude-distorted perceptions of others, the false consensus "effect" appears to result from one of the oldest social psychological phenomena in the literature: conformity to perceived social norms.
Description
| Type of resource | text |
|---|---|
| Form | electronic; electronic resource; remote |
| Extent | 1 online resource. |
| Publication date | 2010 |
| Issuance | monographic |
| Language | English |
Creators/Contributors
| Associated with | Gauthier, Lori Donay |
|---|---|
| Associated with | Stanford University, Department of Communication |
| Primary advisor | Krosnick, Jon A |
| Thesis advisor | Krosnick, Jon A |
| Thesis advisor | Fishkin, James S |
| Thesis advisor | Iyengar, Shanto |
| Thesis advisor | Reeves, Byron, 1949- |
| Advisor | Fishkin, James S |
| Advisor | Iyengar, Shanto |
| Advisor | Reeves, Byron, 1949- |
Subjects
| Genre | Theses |
|---|
Bibliographic information
| Statement of responsibility | Lori D. Gauthier. |
|---|---|
| Note | Submitted to the Department of Communication. |
| Thesis | Thesis (Ph. D.)--Stanford University, 2010. |
| Location | electronic resource |
Access conditions
- Copyright
- © 2010 by Lori Donay Gauthier
- License
- This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution Non Commercial 3.0 Unported license (CC BY-NC).
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