The False Consensus Effect: Why people believe their echo chambers

Today we discuss the "false consensus" effect, and explore recent studies on how this is impacted by social media, comments, and echo chambers.

Further Reading:
Bunker, C. J., & Varnum, M. E. (2021). How strong is the association between social media use and false consensus?. Computers in Human Behavior, 125, 106947.

Luzsa, R., & Mayr, S. (2021). False consensus in the echo chamber: Exposure to favorably biased social media news feeds leads to increased perception of public support for own opinions. Cyberpsychology: Journal of Psychosocial Research on Cyberspace, 15(1).

Mullen, B., Atkins, J. L., Champion, D. S., Edwards, C., Hardy, D., Story, J. E., & Vanderklok, M. (1985). The false consensus effect: A meta-analysis of 115 hypothesis tests. Journal of Experimental Social Psychology, 21(3), 262-283.

Marks, G., & Miller, N. (1987). Ten years of research on the false-consensus effect: An empirical and theoretical review. Psychological bulletin, 102(1), 72.

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(3), 279-301.

Alicke, M. D., & Largo, E. (1995). The role of self in the false consensus effect. Journal of Experimental Social Psychology, 31(1), 28-47.

[ratadedospatas]

Very interesting video! Unrelated question: How do you guys think chatGPT will affect the field of psychology? I personally have fun asking the AI a bunch of random questions like “what is consciousness?” “Will the human species survive climate change?” “is human nature good or bad?” Haha speaking about good and evil, I recommend an anime called “Monster”, it’s a psychological thriller and it’s so good. I think you guys would really like it!!! It has one of the best written antagonists in history, in my opinion.