The Illusion of Consensus: A Failure to Distinguish Between True and False Consensus

Abstract

When evaluating information, we cannot always rely on what has been presented as truth: Different sources might disagree with each other, and sometimes there may be no underlying truth. Accordingly, we must use other cues to evaluate information—perhaps the most salient of which is consensus. But what counts as consensus? Do we attend only to surface-level indications of consensus, or do we also probe deeper and consider why sources agree? Four experiments demonstrated that individuals evaluate consensus only superficially: Participants were equally confident in conclusions drawn from a true consensus (derived from independent primary sources) and a false consensus (derived from only one primary source). This phenomenon was robust, occurring even immediately after participants explicitly stated that a true consensus was more believable than a false consensus. This illusion of consensus reveals a powerful means by which misinformation may spread.

Adding types, but not tokens, affects property induction

“…Beyond Nosofsky (1988), our findings are also broadly at odds with the numerous demonstrations that learners typically struggle to understand the implications of different types of evidence sampling when making judgments under uncertainty (Foster et al, 2012;Gonzalez, 1994;Nosofsky, 1988;Yousif et al, 2019). One popular account, termed "metacognitive myopia" specifically suggests that people often fail to take account of the different weight that should be attached to independent (i.e., novel) and dependent (redundant or repeated) evidence (Fiedler, 2012;Fiedler, Joschahofferbert, Krueger & Koch, 2015).…”

“…As mentioned earlier, many previous experiments -and the real world -often involved less "kind" learning environments (e.g., Jasny et al, 2015;Nosofsky, 1988;Unkelbach et al, 2007;Yousif et al, 2019). In real-world environments, the dependency amongst sources can be obscured.…”

“…More recently, a large body of research (e.g., Barberá, Jost, Nagler, Tucker & Bonneau, 2015;Gvirsman, 2014;Sasahara et al, 2019) describes how repeating information in "echo chambers" can influence beliefs (Iyengar & Hahn, 2009), collective voter accuracy (Hahn, von Sydow & Merdes, 2019), and public policy (Jasny, Waggle & Fisher, 2015). Other experimental work demonstrates that people often 'double-count' information from dependent sources (Enke & Zimmermann, 2017;Gonzalez, 1994;Unkelbach & Rom, 2017), and can be swayed by "false consensus", or the repetition of a claim from a single source (Foster, Huthwaite, Yesberg, Garry & Loftus, 2012;Yousif, Aboody & Keil, 2019).…”

Majority rules: how good are we at aggregating convergent opinions?

“…One study, in contrast, exposed participants to direct cues of common sources, with no effect. The participants were provided with several newspapers articles, issued by distinct newspapers, that either all relied on the same expert or on different experts (Yousif et al 2018). Participants did not put more weight on the opinion defended by different experts (possibly because they interpreted the endorsement of different newspapers as a sign of greater expertise; see Estlund 1994).…”

Citizens Versus the Internet: Confronting Digital Challenges With Cognitive Tools

“…For example, the length of messages on Twitter "encourages short declarative statements absent of supporting arguments [so that] users do not become suspicious of unreferenced assertions" (NATO StratCom, 2017, p. 16). Moreover, manipulative use of certain cues can lead to dubious or outright false claims and ideas being disseminated-for instance, by creating fake news websites, impersonating well-known sources and social media accounts, inflating emotional content (Crockett, 2017), or creating an illusion of consensus (Yousif, Aboody, & Keil, 2019).…”