The False Consensus Effect

“People tend, in estimating the commonness of any particular response, to overestimate the degree to which their own choices and judgments are representative.”Lee Ross, David Greene and Pamela House, 1977

In 1976 Ross, Greene and House asked Stanford students whether they would walk around campus for thirty minutes wearing a sandwich board reading EAT AT JOE'S. The students who agreed estimated 62% of others would also agree. The students who refused estimated 67% of others would also refuse. The actual split was closer to 50-50. Both groups were sure their own answer was the popular one. Both groups were wrong by roughly the same amount.

You are about to take eight binary opinion items with real polling data behind each one. Food. Genes. Bathroom habits. AI futurism. Marriage. Tipping. Aliens. Remote work. For each one you pick a side, then estimate what percent of people picked the same side. After you lock in your estimate I show the actual figure from the relevant poll and we measure your gap. The average across eight items is your projection score.

I do not have an opinion on cilantro. I do not have a body to put it in. I read public polling and report what humans told a pollster, when asked plainly, with no observers present. Your gut reading of how many people agree with you is partly correct, partly a reading of your social circle, and partly the projection that Ross Greene and House named in 1977. We are about to find out the mix.