Social Cognition

Mini Review

• The fundamental attribution error is about explaining other people’s behavior.
• The self-serving bias and the better-than-average effect are about explaining and rating yourself.

Estimate These Again: Results

Estimate These Again: What the Figure Shows

• All twelve of you guessed too low on how many adults finished high school. The class median was 65%, and the survey number is 90%.
• Ten of twelve guessed too high on vegetarians, and nine of twelve guessed too low on adults who drink and on high school seniors who drank this year.
• On households with a gun and on bachelor’s degrees, the class split evenly above and below the survey number.
• Nine of twelve said the teen birth rate went down, but the five of you who gave an amount put the drop at about 30%, and it was 80%.

The False Consensus Effect

• False consensus effect: The tendency to overestimate how many other people share one’s own beliefs, attitudes, and behaviors.
  • Ex: A voter is surprised when her candidate loses, because everyone she knows was voting for him.
  • Ex: A manager who checks email at night assumes the staff does too.
• People estimate other people’s views as closer to their own than they are. People on each side of a choice think their side is the bigger one.

The Sandwich-Board Study

• The sandwich-board study (1977): College students were asked to walk around campus for thirty minutes wearing a sign that read “Eat at Joe’s.” Each student decided yes or no, then estimated what percent of other students would agree to wear it.
  • Finding: Students who agreed to wear the sign estimated that about 62% of others would also agree to wear it. Students who refused to wear it estimated that only 33% would agree to wear it. Each group thought its own choice was the common one.
• A meta-analysis (1985) of 115 studies found the effect across attitudes, habits, and choices.
• Recent studies find the same pattern in estimates of how many people share one’s political views, with the largest overestimates among people whose friends mostly agree with them.

Why the False Consensus Effect Happens

• The people you know are like you. Friends, family, and coworkers tend to share your views, so the sample you estimate from is not the population.
• Your own view comes to mind first. Estimating what others think starts from what you think, and the estimate does not move far enough from that starting point.
• Your choice feels reasonable. A reasonable choice seems like the one most people would make.
• The effect is smaller when a person has seen the real numbers, which is why your responses to these same questions today that you also answered a few weeks ago did change to some extent (ex - Most all of you remembered that suicide was more common and that the teenage birth rate went down, but not by how much.)

Poll: Drinking at Parties

Two ratings, both from 1 (not at all comfortable) to 5 (completely comfortable):

1. How comfortable are you with the amount of drinking at parties here?
2. How comfortable is the average Kentucky State student with it?

Click Here to Answer

Poll Results: Drinking at Parties

• Your own comfort averaged 3.8. Your estimate of the average student’s comfort averaged 4.3.
• Eight of thirteen of you rated yourselves less comfortable than the average student, but by a small amount.

Pluralistic Ignorance

• Pluralistic ignorance: A situation in which most members of a group privately reject a norm but go along with it because each one wrongly believes that most of the others accept it.
  • Ex: Nobody in a lecture asks a question, because each student thinks everyone else understood.
  • Ex: A group of friends keeps going to a bar none of them likes, because each one thinks the others like it.
  • Ex: A team stays late every night because each person thinks the others expect it.
• Each person reads the others’ silence as agreement, and the others are reading the same silence the same way.

The Campus Drinking Study

• The campus drinking study (1993): Students at one university rated how comfortable they were with the amount of drinking on campus, and then rated how comfortable the average student was.
  • Finding: Students rated themselves as less comfortable than the average student, and most students gave the same answer, so the “average student” they described did not exist. Over the semester, men’s own attitudes moved toward the norm they had imagined.
• A meta-analysis (2003) of studies on many campuses found that students overestimate how much and how often other students drink.
• Programs that publish the real numbers reduce both the overestimate and the drinking, which is the basis of the social-norms posters on many campuses.

Why Pluralistic Ignorance Happens

• Behavior is public and doubt is private. A person sees others going along and cannot see that they doubt it.
• Going along looks like agreeing. People take the same behavior, staying quiet, as agreement when others do it and as politeness when they do it themselves.
• Nobody wants to be the first to object. Each person waits for evidence that others object, and the evidence never appears because everyone is waiting.
• The smoke-filled room study (1968): People filled out forms alone or with two others while smoke poured into the room through a vent.
  • Finding: Alone, most people reported the smoke within a few minutes. With two calm strangers in the room, most did not report it at all. Each one read the others’ calm as evidence that nothing was wrong.

False Consensus and Pluralistic Ignorance Compared

• What is being judged?
  • False consensus effect: How many others share your view.
  • Pluralistic ignorance: What others privately think about a norm.
• Which direction is the error?
  • False consensus effect: Others are assumed to agree with you more than they do.
  • Pluralistic ignorance: Others are assumed to accept a norm more than they do, and you assume you are the exception.

False Consensus and Pluralistic Ignorance Compared, Continued

• What corrects it?
  • False consensus effect: A real count of what people think.
  • Pluralistic ignorance: One person saying the private view out loud.
• Both effects can happen in the same group. Members overestimate how many agree with the views they say out loud and underestimate how many share the doubts they keep to themselves.

Practice: Which Effect Is It?

For each one, say whether it shows the false consensus effect, pluralistic ignorance, or neither.

1. A group chat agrees to a 6 a.m. hike. Afterward, three of the people separately tell a friend they never wanted to go and said yes because everyone else seemed excited.
2. A man who tips 25% assumes that most restaurant customers tip about the same.
3. A student surveys her dorm floor and finds that 70% want quiet hours to start earlier. She proposes it at the floor meeting, and it passes.
4. A voter who follows politics closely thinks that about 80% of adults can name both of their state’s senators.
5. A new employee notices that nobody uses the break room and eats at her desk. When she finally asks, each coworker says they thought the others preferred their desks.
6. A man who checks the weather app every morning assumes that most people do.

Practice: Answers

1. Pluralistic ignorance (each person privately rejected the plan and believed the others accepted it).
2. False consensus (he assumes most customers tip the way he does).
3. Neither (the decision matched what people privately wanted).
4. False consensus (he assumes most adults know what he knows).
5. Pluralistic ignorance (each person privately wanted the break room and believed the others did not).
6. False consensus (he assumes most people share his habit).