My latest blog post for Psychology Today. People have false beliefs on social consensus. The illusory social consensus effect is important for work on disinfo. I started from a recent paper by @maddyjalbert.bsky.social and @rmpillai.bsky.social A 🧵 1/ www.psychologytoday.com/us/blog/ment... - ThreadSky

irahyman.bsky.social • 65 days ago

My latest blog post for Psychology Today.

People have false beliefs on social consensus. The illusory social consensus effect is important for work on disinfo.

I started from a recent paper by @maddyjalbert.bsky.social and @rmpillai.bsky.social

A 🧵 1/

https://www.psychologytoday.com/us/blog/mental-mishaps/202503/illusory-social-consensus

Comments

irahyman.bsky.social•65 days ago

I started by noting that we aren't great at knowing whether others agree with us. We overestimate others agreeing with us -- something called the false consensus effect.

Repetition makes things worse. Repeated false info makes people more likely to believe something. And here's the new finding. 2/

irahyman.bsky.social•65 days ago

Jalbert and Pillai found repeated exposure to info leads people to believe that many other people also believe the idea. Repeating false information disrupts our assessment of consensus.

This is why people underestimate support for addressing climate change. They falsely estimate consensus. 3/

glinden.bsky.social•64 days ago

On this, the connection to propaganda on social media is important. Anyone easily can create a hundred accounts for themselves and have all those accounts post, comment, and like together. That creates an illusion of consensus and popularity, drowning out other voices with theirs.

glinden.bsky.social•64 days ago

Most people assume sockpuppet and bot accounts are real, even nowadays, so this easily works. You can create hundreds of accounts for yourself, even foreign operatives can, with profiles claiming to be people living in the US. Manipulating, shouting down, feigning consensus. It's like a megaphone.

irahyman.bsky.social•64 days ago

There are people for hire who do this as part of both promoting one person and attacking others. The tools of disinformation used for PR.

https://www.psychologytoday.com/us/blog/mental-mishaps/202412/when-stars-collide-a-hollywood-disinformation-story

irahyman.bsky.social•65 days ago

This is why it is so important to contest false info in some fashion. By questioning, expressing doubt about something, you can let other people know that maybe it isn't the case that everyone agrees.

This is also why Maddy and I like calling something weird. 4/
https://www.cip.uw.edu/2024/08/12/weird-checking-new-fact-checking/

irahyman.bsky.social•65 days ago

This highlights why it is important to go to the protest. If more people attend protests and if more protests happen, then maybe the news will start covering the protests more. When that happens, people may adjust their views on where social consensus is.

Go read Jalbert & Pillais's paper. 5/5

Comments

Posting Rules

Reply