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Public Opinion Quarterly, Vol. 72, No. 4, Winter 2008, pp. 781791

FALSE CONSENSUS GOES ONLINE

IMPACT OF IDEOLOGICALLY HOMOGENEOUS GROUPS

ON FALSE CONSENSUS

MAGDALENA WOJCIESZAK

Abstract This study analyzes survey data obtained from members

of neo-Nazi and radical environmentalist discussion forums. It assesses

the extent to which participants in homogeneous online groups exhibit

false consensus, i.e., overestimate public support for their views, andwhether the overestimation increases with increased online participation.

Although the analyzed sample overestimates public support, the over-

estimation is no greater than found with more conventional populations

studied to date. However, false consensus among the neo-Nazis increases

with their involvement in online groups, also controlling for extremism.

Among the environmentalists, it is the extremism, not online participation

that accounts for false consensus. Theoretical and practical implications

of these findings are discussed.

Decades of research have demonstrated that there is a close relation between

peoples opinions and their perceptions of the public opinion climate (Wallen

1943; OGorman 1975, 1979; Taylor 1982). Those who dislike dark bread

will tend to think that others also dislike it, and people who support space

exploration will be inclined to believe that others also favor sending humans

into outer space (Ross, Greene, and House 1977). This tendency to attribute

ones own sentiments to other people has been labeled false consensus effect,

and seems to be widespread across issues and circumstances (Krueger andClement 1994).

Will radical ideologues active in homogeneous online groups also think that

the public shares their sociopolitical perspectives? Will continued interactions

with like-minded online communities exacerbate the degree to which partici-

pants see public support for their views? These questions are theoretically and

MAGDALENA WOJCIESZAK is with the Annenberg School for Communication at the University of

Pennsylvania, 3620 Walnut Street, Philadelphia, PA 19104-6220, USA. The author would like to

thank Dr. Michael Delli Carpini, Dr. Vincent Price, and Dr. Michael Hennessy from the Annen-berg School for Communication, as well as three anonymous reviewers and the editor. Address

correspondence to Magdalena Wojcieszak; e-mail: [email protected].


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practically relevant. Scrutinizing whether individuals embedded in reinforcing

communicative settings are yet more prone to exhibit false consensus adds

to the robust evidence that has primarily come from relatively conventional

samples. Analyzing whether false consensus increases with participation inideologically homogeneous online groups also addresses the debate regarding

fragmentation and polarization potentially occurring in the online environment

(e.g., Sunstein 2001).

This study thus assesses the extent to which false consensusunderstood as

overestimating public support for individuals own viewsoccurs among par-

ticipants in neo-Nazi and radical environmentalist online discussion forums.1

Contextualizing the findings suggests that although the analyzed sample over-

estimates public support, the overestimation is no greater than found among

more conventional populations in previous research. Online participation andideological extremism are also found to play important roles, although differ-

ently for neo-Nazis and radical environmentalists.

Research on False Consensus

Researchers have established that people tend to see general support for their

own views on such issues as racial attitudes (OGorman 1975; Fields and

Schuman 1976), nuclear energy, pollution regulation (Taylor 1982), environ-

mental problems (Glynn and Park 1997), space exploration, paying a traffic

ticket, or appearing in a supermarket commercial (Ross, Greene, and House

1977). Meta-analyses concerned with relative differences between support-

ers and opponents find that people who favor a given position estimate this

position to be more common than those who favor an alternative position

(Mullen et al. 1985). For example, students who agreed to carry a commercial

sign on campus thought that 62 percent would agree, while those who dis-

agreed said that 67 percent would also refuse (Ross et al. 1977). City respon-

dents with unfavorable attitudes toward Blacks were also more likely (average

66 percent) to impute segregationist values to others than those with favorable

attitudes (average 35 percent) (OGorman 1975). Similarly, both supporters

1. Studies on false consensus have primarily tested whether the estimates provided by opponents

and supporters differ, and hence the phenomenon traditionally has no direct bearing on whether

subjects will overestimate or underestimate the actual consensus (Mullen and Hu 1988, p. 334).

Increasingly, researchers have become concerned with accuracy and noted that paradoxically,

there are not many studies that directly compare estimates with actual frequencies (de la Haye

2000, p. 571; see Krueger and Clement 1994; Gross and Miller 1997; Krueger 1998; Kulig

2000). The operationalization proposed here, i.e., overestimating public support for own views,addresses the recent methodological discussions and also has several advantages. It speaks to

perceived differences with public opinion overlooked by measures that assess differences between


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Online False Consensus 783

and opponents projected their positions on various sociopolitical issues onto

student peers (e.g., abortion supporters estimated the support for 67 percent

while the opponents thought that 63 percent also opposed) (Bauman and Geher

2002).Meta analyses concerned with accuracy show that the extent to which peo-

ple overestimate support for their views is partly due to the factual or sample

opinion distribution. People in the minority (>49 percent) tend to overestimate

the consensus for their positions by an average of 24 percent and those in the

majority (51 percent>) underestimate it by roughly 6 percent (Mullen and Hu

1988), with approximately 60 percent being the factual consensus that sep-

arates the minority overestimation from the majority underestimation (Gross

and Miller 1997). For example, the majority willing to lend money to a friend

underestimated others willingness by 7 percent, while the minority who re-fused overestimated the consensus for their refusal by 25 percent (Goethals

1986). Similarly, the majority underestimated the factual consensus on so-

ciopolitical issues ranging from poverty reduction to nuclear warfare by an

average 6 percent while the minority overestimated it by 25 percent (Sanders

and Mullen 1983), andin another studyby roughly 7 and 21 percent,

respectively (Mullen and Smith 1990).

False Consensus, Homogeneous Groups

and Online Environment

Those studies have primarily relied on student, regional, or national samples,

and hence false consensus has been established among conventional popu-

lations. May this phenomenon be yet stronger among people embedded in

reinforcing settings, such as ideologically unanimous online groups? Might

continued interactions within such settings exacerbate the false consensus ef-

fect? Existing theory and research would suggest this to be the case. For one,

false consensus results from ego-defensive or dissonance-reducing motivationsto justify ones views and from selective exposure to consonant opinions (Marks

and Miller 1987). Both mechanisms occur within homogeneous online com-

munities. Members self-select to online groups that share their perspectives,

and although such self-selection does not demand that we err in our estimates

concerning the relevant populations. . .it does make such errors likely (Mullen

et al. 1985, p. 298). Also, consonant opinions might be more readily retrievable

from memory than dissonant ones, exacerbating the extent to which participants

are susceptible to the false consensus effect.

False consensus is also explained by opinion certainty (Fields and Schuman1976; Taylor 1982), and also by the lack of information that would demonstrate


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Wojcieszak forthcoming), they are confident in their judgments. Because such

online groups also provide reinforcing opinions and counterarguments are not

expressed, members may be yet more prone to see public support for their

views. Overall, participants in ideologically homogeneous online groups shouldbe particularly likely to overestimate public support for their perspectives, and

their overestimation should increase with increased participation in such online

groups.

Method

Data for this study come from an online survey conducted in summer 2005

of participants in neo-Nazi and radical environmentalist online discussion

forums.2 Participants email addresses and private messages (PM) were com-

piled by first selecting every second thread dating back to June 1, 2004 and then

selecting every second topic given a random start. Every second email address

or, when unavailable, every second PM was then randomly collected from

those topics to create a list of active participants. When member directories

were available, participants nationalities were checked to exclude non-North

Americans, to whom some questions would not be relevant.

An email with a link to the online survey was sent to 517 email addresses

and PMs, and a week later follow-up requests were sent. Of these, 202 re-

sulted in fully completed interviews used in this analysis (neo-Nazi n = 112,

environmentalists n = 90). An additional 121 resulted in partially completed

interviews, which are not included, and no response was received or the email

was returned for 194 contacts. The AAPOR response rate (RR1) is 39 percent.

The sample was younger (age M= 35, SD = 13) and more racially homoge-

neous (94 percent white) than the general population. Respondents were also

better educated (M= 16 years), mostly male (67 percent), and with median

household income between $30,000 and $50,000.

FALSE CONSENSUS

Consistent with this studys conceptualization of false consensus as overesti-

mating public support for ones own views, the difference scores between re-

spondents estimates and the factual public opinion distribution were calculated.

2. The forums were identified by an online search and web graph analysis using the Issue Crawlersoftware. The Issue Crawler builds the web graph from URLs provided by a researcher, analyzes

their outgoing links and displays a cluster map depicting interconnections between the websites


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Using standard wording from studies on false consensus, participants in neo-

Nazi forums were asked: In your opinion what percent of the American

population agrees that we have gone too far in pushing equal rights in this

country and that we havent gone too far in pushing equal rights. Thesequestions were adapted from Pew Research Center, which found that 44 per-

cent of Americans agreed that we have gone too far and 56 percent disagreed

(July 2003). Participants in environmentalist forums estimated the percent of

the American population that thinks that globalization is a good thing and

that globalization is a bad thing. This question was taken from Pew Global

Attitudes Project Poll, according to which 69 percent of Americans saw glob-

alization as good and 31 percent regarded it as bad (August 2002).3 The final

measure was created separately for each group by subtracting the factual public

opinion distributions from respondents estimates (neo-Nazis M= 6.01, SD=24; environmentalists M= 12.95, SD = 22).

LEVEL OF PARTICIPATION IN ONLINE GROUPS

Using participation in online groups as an independent measure requires ad-

dressing such issues as the frequency and the amount of time spent on-

line. These were assessed by two questions: During the past week, how

many times did you enter this forum and other forums that address po-litical issues from a similar point of view? (1 indicating never and

5 more than 7 times), and how much time did you spend participating

in this forum and in other forums that discuss political issues from a similar

point of view? (1 representing up to 30 minutes and 6 5 hours or more). To

create a complete measure, an additional question asked: When did you first

start participating in this forum and in other forums that discuss political issues

from a similar point of view? (1 indicating less than 3 months ago, and 5

more than 2 years ago). The final measure was created by averaging the re-

sponses (one factor, neo-Nazis= .76,M= 3.55, SD= 1.26; environmentalists = .80, M= 3.45, SD = 1.32; range 1.05.3, higher values indicate greater

participation).

3. Because the Pews questionnaire asked whether respondents completely or mostly

agreed/disagreed with the statement, We have gone too far in pushing equal rights in this coun-

try, Pews distribution was dichotomized so that it could be subtracted from the respondents

estimates. That is, completely agree and mostly agree responses were combined into agree,

and mostly disagree and completely disagree were collapsed into disagree, and the dontknow/refused responses (3 percent) were randomly divided between the two categories. Pew

Global Attitudes Project survey asked whether respondents thought that globalization is a very


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IDEOLOGICAL EXTREMISM

To address the potential spuriousness between online participation and false

consensus, the survey also measured extremism. Respondents indicated, on aseven-point scale ranging from 1 (strongly disagree) to 7 (strongly agree),

their agreement with 10 ideology-specific statements. Examples include Vio-

lence against non-white people is a natural ritual passage into true manhood

or All non-white people who are now in the US should be deported and not

allowed back into the country (neo-Nazi questionnaire) and Sometimes it is

worth sacrificing human lives so that nature survives or Arson, vandalism,

theft or other destructive attacks against businesses are acceptable when done

to promote environmental or animal-rights causes (environmentalist question-

naire). The final measure, created from averaging the responses, ranged from1 to 7 with 7 being the most extreme (one factor, neo-Nazis = .76, M= 5.2,

SD = 1.1; environmentalists = .87, M= 4.8, SD = 1.5).

Results

This study examined whether and to what extent participants in ideologically

homogeneous online groups overestimate public support for their own per-

spectives and whether their overestimations increase with online participation.

Because respondents estimates and also the public opinion distributions ob-tained from Pew Research Center were issue specific, neo-Nazis and environ-

mentalists were analyzed separately. To establish whether respondents exhibit

false consensus, the factual public opinion distributions as found by Pew were

subtracted from respondents estimates. Both groups overestimated public sup-

port for their positions. Neo-Nazis overestimated the proportion of the popula-

tion that thinks we have gone too far in pushing equal rights by 6 percent, on

average saying that 50 percent agrees versus 44 percent found by Pew. Envi-

ronmentalists exhibited greater false consensus, thinking that 44 percent of the

population saw globalization as bad, as opposed to the 31 percent found by Pew.To scrutinize the factors that exacerbate or attenuate false consensus and

to address the concerns regarding reinforcing online interactions, multivariate

models were constructed. Does false consensus increase with involvement in

ideologically homogeneous online groups? As model 1 in table 1 shows, online

participation indeed significantly predicted overestimating public support for

neo-Nazi positions, with age also being an important predictor. How large are

the effects? From the coefficients it can be calculated that every 10 years of

age, overestimation can be expected to increase by roughly 5 percent. In com-

parison, there is a 27.5 percent increase in overestimating racially intolerantattitudes from those least to most involved in neo-Nazi online forums. Given


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Table I. Predicting False Consensus

Neo-Nazis Environmentalists

Model 1 Model 2 Model 1 Model 2

Before-entry b Final b Before-entry b Final b

(SE) (SE) (SE) (SE)

Age 0.53 0.50 0.68 0.60

(0.19) (0.19) (0.21) (0.21)

Education 0.91 1.00 0.23 0.71

(0.92) (0.90) (0.86) (0.87)

Gender 3.83 3.81 2.93 4.73

(7.15) (7.03) (4.84) (4.81)

Income 1.64 1.30 1.93 1.93(1.55) (1.53) (1.66) (1.64)

Online Participation 5.50 4.12 0.19 0.18

(2.00) (2.08) (1.74) (1.70)

First BlockR2(%) 18.6 13.6

Extremism 4.58 3.93

(2.18) (1.83)

Incremental R2 (%) 3.4 4.8

Final R2 (%) 22.0 18.4

NOTE.Entries are unstandardized OLS regression coefficients with standard errors in paren-

theses.p 0.001, p .01, p .05

40-year-old environmentalist would overestimate public discontent with glob-

alization by 7 percent relative to a 30-year-old one. There was, however, no

relationship between participation in radical environmentalist online groups

and false consensus.Extremism triggers self-selection to ideologically homogeneous groups and

may also exacerbate false consensus (Taylor 1982). In order to establish that

the relationship between participating in neo-Nazi online groups and overesti-

mating public support is not spurious, ideological extremism was included in

the analyses. For the neo-Nazis, model 2 shows that although extremism was

positively associated with false consensus, with the most extreme neo-Nazis

overestimating public support by roughly 32 percent relative to the least ex-

treme, online participation remained significant. This indicates that those who

are very involved in neo-Nazi online groups are more likely to exhibit falseconsensus even after controlling for extremism and sociodemographics. For en-


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those most extreme actually underestimating public support for their views, and

with the moderately extreme environmentalists providing accurate estimates.

Conclusion

This study aimed to add to the literature on false consensus, by assessing the

extent to which this phenomenon occurs in atypical populations not studied to

date. This analysis also addressed the debate on fragmentation and polarization

potentially occurring in the online environment by determining whether par-

ticipants in ideologically homogeneous online groups are especially likely to

overestimate public support for their views, and whether online participation

exacerbates this overestimation.

Overall, the results show that the analyzed participants exhibit false consen-sus. Those active in neo-Nazi online discussion groups think that more people

disfavor the progress in equal rights than do in reality, and the radical envi-

ronmentalists overestimate the extent to which Americans see globalization as

bad. At the same time, the analyzed neo-Nazis are far from believing that the

population as a whole or even its solid majority espouses racially intolerant

attitudes, and the radical environmentalists still recognize that they are in a

minority. In other words, the extent to which the analyzed respondents overes-

timate public support for their views is not substantially greater than what one

would expect to find among a more conventional sample.This finding is noteworthy, especially given the past research and the unusual

nature of the sample. For one, people in general are unable to avoid projecting

their own positions onto others and hence the false consensus effect is seen

as an ineradicable bias (Krueger and Clement 1994). Radical ideologues

should do that to yet greater extent because their strongly held views are

easily accessible, readily evoked in mind, and frequently used when making

probability estimates (Tversky and Kahneman 1973; Iyengar 1990). Secondly,

people who are in the minority are especially likely to overestimate general

support for their positions (recall the average 24 percent; Mullen and Hu 1988).Because those with negative attitudes toward equal rights and globalization are

in fact a minority in American society, the estimates made by participants in

neo-Nazi and radical environmentalist online groups are lower than would be

expected.

While this finding might cast doubt on the concerns regarding fragmenta-

tion and polarization potentially occurring online, another finding lends partial

support to these concerns. Engagement in ideologically homogeneous online

groups substantially exacerbates the tendency among the analyzed neo-Nazis

to project their attitudes onto others. Compared to those least engaged, themost engaged neo-Nazis overestimate public discontent with equal rights by


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accounts for false consensus, in that extreme environmentalists assess public

support for globalization as lower than those less extreme.

Several issues need to be addressed. First, because the data depended on

self-report provided by unconventional respondents, the findings cannot begeneralized to other populations. Also, even though there is an association

between participation in neo-Nazi online groups and false consensus, the cross-

sectional design limits the ability to make inferences about causality. Although

there are theoretical reasons to suppose that ideologically homogeneous groups

exacerbate false consensus, longitudinal and experimental research is needed

to establish causality. Finally, the findings on participants in discussion forums

might not apply to those utilizing chat rooms or other computer-mediated

communication. In order to account for this, attempts were also made to recruit

visitors to neo-Nazis and environmentalists Yahoo! and IRC (Internet RelayChat) chats. Because those online spaces are less populated, the number of

respondents was insufficient to conduct analyses.4

Despite these limitations, this study has several noteworthy implications.

Contrary to expectations, some radical ideologues active in homogeneous on-

line groups are not substantially more likely than conventional individuals to

overestimate public support for their sociopolitical perspectives. This might

indicate that false consensus is a widespread phenomenon, whose magnitude

may be relatively unaffected not only by the issues studied (Mullen et al.

1985), but also by the populations whose public opinion perceptions are beinganalyzed.

It is such factors as reinforcing communicative environments or extrem-

ism that may affect the extent to which people attribute their own views to

others. For some individuals, processes occurring within ideologically ho-

mogeneous online communities, such as exposure to consonant opinions or

assessing public opinion based on an inaccurate sampling frame, might ex-

acerbate false consensus. Because voluntary political associations in general

tend to involve reinforcement, research should determine whether people ac-

tive in face-to-face organizations overestimate public support to a differentextent than those from online groups. To address the debate on the relative

perils presented by online selectivity, studies should also assess whether re-

inforcing interactions exacerbate false consensus differently among partic-

ipants in online and face-to-face groups. Finally, the role that extremism

plays in false consensus should also be examined further (see Fabrigar and

Krosnick 1995; Christen and Gunther 2003). Research needs to determine

whether the extent to which people with strong views project these views

onto others might be ideology or issue specific. Perhaps some individuals or

4. Participants in such groups are not likely to substantially differ from discussion forums partici-

pants because there is a high degree of overlap with neo Nazis and environmentalists utilizing both


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groups prefer to see their strongly held opinions as unique (Suls and Wan 1987)

and benefit from portraying public opinion climate as hostile. The continued

debates regarding polarization in the online and offline environment make

studies on false consensus and the factors that affect it both necessary andtimely.

Supplementary Data

Supplementary data are available online at http://poq.oxfordjournals.org/.

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