A number of people quite naturally believe they are good ''intuitive psychology experts'', thinking it is relatively easy to predict other people''s attitudes and behaviours. We each have information built up from countless prior experiences involving both ourselves and others so surely we should have solid insights?

No such luck.

In reality people show many predictable biases when estimating other people''s behaviour and its causes. And these biases help to show exactly why we need psychology experiments and why we can''t rely on our intuitions about the behaviour of others.

One of these biases is called the false consensus bias. In the 1970s Stanford University social psychology expert Professor Lee Ross set out to show just how the false consensus bias operates in two neat studies (Ross, Greene & House, 1977).

False consensus
In the first study participants were asked to read about situations in which a conflict occurred and then told two alternative ways of responding. They were asked to do three things:

• Guess which option other people would choose,
• Say which option they would choose,
• Describe the attributes of the person who would choose each of the two options.

The results showed more people thought others would do the same as them, regardless of which of the two responses they actually chose themselves. This shows what Ross and his colleagues dubbed the ''false consensus'' bias - the idea that we each think other people think the same way we do when actually they often don''t.

Another bias emerged when participants were asked to describe the attributes of the person who made the opposite choice to their own. In comparison to other people who made the same choice they did, people made more extreme predictions about the personalities of those who made didn''t share their choice.

To put it a little crassly: people tend to assume that those who don''t agree with them have something wrong with them! It might seem like a joke, but it is a real bias that people demonstrate.

Eat at Joe''s!
While the finding from the first study is all very well in theory, how can we be sure people really behave the way they say they will? After all, psychology experts have famously found little correlation between people''s attitudes and their behaviour.

In a second study, therefore, Ross and his colleagues abandoned hypothetical situations, paper and pencil test and instead took up the mighty sandwich board.

This time a new set of participants, who were university students, were asked if they would be willing to walk around their campus for 30 minutes wearing a sandwich board saying: "Eat at Joe''s". (No information is available about the food quality at ''Joe''s'', and consequently how foolish students would look.)

For motivation participants were simply told they would learn ''something useful'' from the study, but that they were absolutely free to refuse if they wished.

The results of this study confirmed the prior study. Of those who agreed to wear the sandwich board, 62% thought others would also agree. Of those who refused, only 33% thought others would agree to wear the sandwich board. Posted by: Jerry    Source

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