Skip to main content
Search
Search
    Quick Search anywhere
    Quick search in Citations
Advanced Search
Skip main navigationClose Drawer MenuOpen Drawer Menu
Previous article
Replication

A Replication of Stern, West, and Schmitt (2014) Indicates Less False Consensus Among Liberals Than Conservatives, But No False Uniqueness

Published Online:May 31, 2021https://doi.org/10.1027/1864-9335/a000448

Abstract

Abstract.Stern, West, and Schmitt (2014) reported that liberals display truly false uniqueness in contrast to moderates and conservatives who display truly false consensus. We conducted a close, preregistered replication of Stern et al.’s (2014) research with a large sample (N = 1,005). Liberals, moderates, and conservatives demonstrated the truly false consensus effect by overestimating ingroup consensus. False consensus was strongest among conservatives, followed by moderates, and weakest among liberals. However, liberals did score higher than moderates and conservatives on the need for uniqueness scale, which partially accounted for the difference in false consensus between liberals and conservatives. Overall, our data align with Stern et al.’s (2014) in demonstrating left-right ideological differences in the overestimation of ingroup consensus but fall short of illustrating a liberal illusion of uniqueness.

References

  • Abramowitz, A. I., & Webster, S. W. (2018). Negative partisanship: Why Americans dislike parties but behave like rabid partisans. Advances in Political Psychology, 39(S1), 119–135. https://doi.org/10.1111/pops.12479 First citation in articleCrossref, Google Scholar

  • Altemeyer, R. A. (1981). Right-wing authoritarianism, University of Manitoba Press. First citation in articleGoogle Scholar

  • Baron, J., & Jost, J. T. (2019). False equivalence: Are liberals and conservatives in the United States equally biased? Perspectives on Psychological Science, 14(2), 292–303. https://doi.org/10.1177/1745691618788876 First citation in articleCrossref, Google Scholar

  • Brandt, M. J., Reyna, C., Chambers, J. R., Crawford, J. T., & Wetherell, G. (2014). The ideological-conflict hypothesis: Intolerance among both liberals and conservatives. Current Directions in Psychological Science, 23(1), 27–34. https://doi.org/10.1177/0963721413510932 First citation in articleCrossref, Google Scholar

  • Butcher, J. N., Dahlstrom, W. G., Graham, J. R., Tellegen, A., & Kaemmer, B. (1989). MMPI-2 manual for administration and scoring, University of Minnesota Press. First citation in articleGoogle Scholar

  • Carney, D. R., Jost, J. T., Gosling, S. D., & Potter, J. (2008). The secret lives of liberals and conservatives: Personality profiles, interaction styles, and the things they leave behind. Political Psychology, 29(6), 807–840. https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1467-9221.2008.00668.x First citation in articleCrossref, Google Scholar

  • Clifford, S., Jewell, R. M., & Waggoner, P. D. (2015). Are samples drawn from Mechanical Turk valid for research on political ideology? Research and Politics, 2(4), 1–9. https://doi.org/10.1177/2053168015622072 First citation in articleCrossref, Google Scholar

  • Collins, T. P., Crawford, J. T., & Brandt, M. J. (2017). No evidence for ideological asymmetry in dissonance avoidance: Unsuccessful close and conceptual replications of Nam, Jost, and van Bavel (2013). Social Psychology, 48(3), 123–134. https://doi.org/10.1027/1864-9335/a000300 First citation in articleLink, Google Scholar

  • Ditto, P. H., Liu, B. S., Clark, C. J., Wojcik, S. P., Chen, E. E., Grady, R. H., Celniker, J. B., & Zinger, J. F. (2019). At least bias is bipartisan: A meta-analytic comparison of partisan bias in liberals and conservatives. Perspectives on Psychological Science, 14(2), 273–291. https://doi.org/10.1177/1745691617746796 First citation in articleCrossref, Google Scholar

  • Dvir-Gvirsman, S. (2015a). Size matters: The effects of political orientation, majority status, and majority size on misperceptions of public opinion. Public Opinion Quarterly, 79(1), 1–27. https://doi.org/10.1093/poq/nfu061 First citation in articleCrossref, Google Scholar

  • Dvir-Gvirsman, S. (2015b). Testing our quasi-statistical sense: News use, political knowledge, and false projection. Political Psychology, 36(6), 729–747. https://doi.org/10.1111/pops.12203 First citation in articleCrossref, Google Scholar

  • Eisenberg, J. (2007). Group cohesiveness. In R. F. BaumeisterK. D. Vohs (Eds.), Encyclopedia of social psychology (pp. 386–388). Sage. First citation in articleCrossref, Google Scholar

  • Frimer, J. A., Skitka, L. J., & Motyl, M. (2017). Liberals and conservatives are similarly motivated to avoid exposure to one another’s opinions. Journal of Experimental Social Psychology, 72(5), 1–12. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jesp.2017.04.003 First citation in articleCrossref, Google Scholar

  • Gilbert, D. T., & Malone, P. S. (1995). The correspondence bias. Psychological Bulletin, 117(1), 21–38. https://doi.org/10.1037/0033-2909.117.1.21 First citation in articleCrossref, Google Scholar

  • Hayes, A. F. (2018). Introduction to mediation, moderation, and conditional process analysis (2nd ed.). The Guilford Press. First citation in articleGoogle Scholar

  • Hogg, M. A. (2007). Uncertainty-identity theory. In M. P. ZannaEd., Advances in experimental social psychology (Vol. 39, pp. 69–126). Elsevier Academic Press. First citation in articleGoogle Scholar

  • Howell, J. L., & O’Mara, E. M. (2020). Political behaviour, perceived similarity to the candidates, and defensiveness: The curious case of a group of first-time voters in a bellwether-swing-state in 2016. Self and Identity, 19(2), 164–180. https://doi.org/10.1080/15298868.2018.1546225 First citation in articleCrossref, Google Scholar

  • Jost, J. T., Glaser, J., Kruglanski, A. W., & Sulloway, F. J. (2003). Political conservatism as motivated social cognition. Psychological Bulletin, 129(3), 339–375. https://doi.org/10.1037/0033-2909.129.3.339 First citation in articleCrossref, Google Scholar

  • Kenny, D. A., & Judd, C. M. (2019). The unappreciated heterogeneity of effect sizes: Implications for power, precision, planning of research, and replication. Psychological Methods, 24(5), 578–589. https://doi.org/10.1037/met0000209 First citation in articleCrossref, Google Scholar

  • Krueger, J., & Zeiger, J. S. (1993). Social categorization and the truly false consensus effect. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 65(4), 670–680. https://doi.org/10.1037/0022-3514.65.4.670 First citation in articleCrossref, Google Scholar

  • Litman, L., Robinson, J., & Abberbock, T. (2017). TurkPrime.com: A versatile crowdsourcing data acquisition platform for the behavioral sciences. Behavior Research Methods, 49(2), 433–442. https://doi.org/10.3758/s13428-016-0727-z First citation in articleCrossref, Google Scholar

  • Malka, A., Soto, C. J., Inzlicht, M., & Lelkes, Y. (2014). Do needs for security and certainty predict cultural and economic conservatism? A cross-national analysis. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 106(6), 1031–1051. https://doi.org/10.1037/a0036170 First citation in articleCrossref, Google Scholar

  • Marks, G., & Miller, N. (1987). Ten years of research on the false consensus effect: An empirical and theoretical review. Psychological Bulletin, 102(1), 72–90. https://doi.org/10.1037/0033-2909.102.1.72 First citation in articleCrossref, Google Scholar

  • McNemar, Q. (1962). Psychological statistics (3rd ed.). Wiley. First citation in articleGoogle Scholar

  • Nail, P. R., McGregor, I., Drinkwater, A. E., Steele, G. M., & Thompson, A. W. (2009). Threat causes liberals to think like conservatives. Journal of Experimental Social Psychology, 45(4), 901–907. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jesp.2009.04.013 First citation in articleCrossref, Google Scholar

  • Osborne, D., & Sibley, C. G. (2020). Does openness to experience predict changes in conservatism? A nine-wave longitudinal investigation into the personality roots to ideology. Journal of Research in Personality, 87, Article 103979. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jrp.2020.103979 First citation in articleCrossref, Google Scholar

  • Reinero, D. A., Wills, J. A., Brady, W. J., Mende-Siedlecki, P., Crawford, J. T., & Van Bavel, J. J. (2020). Is the political slant of psychology research related to scientific replicability? Perspectives on Psychological Science, 15(6), 1310–1328. https://doi.org/10.1177/1745691620924463 First citation in articleCrossref, Google Scholar

  • Rosenfeld, D. L., Balcetis, E., Bastian, B., Berkman, E. T., Bosson, J. K., Brannon, T. N., Burrow, A. L., Cameron, C. D., Chen, S., Cook, J. E., Crandall, C. S., Davidai, S., Dhont, K., Eastwick, P. W., Gaither, S. E., Gangestad, S. W., Gilovich, T., Gray, K., Haines, E. L., … Tomiyama, A. J. (2021). Psychological science in the wake of COVID-19: Social, methodological, and meta-scientific considerations. Perspectives on Psychological Science, First citation in articleGoogle Scholar

  • Ross, L. (1977). The intuitive psychologist and his shortcomings. In L. BerkowitzEd., Advances in experimental social psychology (Vol. 10, pp. 173–220). Academic Press. First citation in articleGoogle Scholar

  • Ross, L., Greene, D., & House, P. (1977). The “false consensus effect”: An egocentric bias in social perception and attribution processes. Journal of Experimental Social Psychology, 13(3), 279–301. https://doi.org/10.1016/0022-1031(77)90049-X First citation in articleCrossref, Google Scholar

  • Simonsohn, U. (2015). Small telescopes: Detectability and the evaluation of replication results. Psychological Science, 26(5), 559–569. https://doi.org/10.1177/0956797614567341 First citation in articleCrossref, Google Scholar

  • Snyder, C. R., & Fromkin, H. L. (1977). Abnormality as a positive characteristic: The development and validation of a scale measuring need for uniqueness. Journal of Abnormal Psychology, 86(5), 518–527. https://doi.org/10.1037/0021-843X.86.5.518 First citation in articleCrossref, Google Scholar

  • Snyder, C. R., & Fromkin, H. L. (1980). Uniqueness: The pursuit of human difference, Springer. First citation in articleCrossref, Google Scholar

  • Sohrabi, C., Alsafi, Z., O’Neill, N., Khan, M., Kerwan, A., Al-Jabir, A., Iosifidis, C., & Agha, R. (2020). World Health Organization declares a global emergency: A review of the 2019 novel coronavirus (COVID-19). International Journal of Surgery, 76(4), 71–76. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.ijsu.2020.02.034 First citation in articleCrossref, Google Scholar

  • Stern, C., West, T. V., & Schmitt, P. G. (2014). The liberal illusion of uniqueness. Psychological Science, 25(1), 137–144. https://doi.org/10.1177/0956797613500796 First citation in articleCrossref, Google Scholar

  • Van Hiel, A., Onraet, E., & De Pauw, S. (2010). The relationship between social-cultural attitudes and behavioral measures of cognitive style: A meta-analytic integration of studies. Journal of Personality, 78(6), 1765–1800. https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1467-6494.2010.00669.x First citation in articleCrossref, Google Scholar

  • Xu, X., Soto, C. J., & Plaks, J. E. (2021). Beyond openness to experience and conscientiousness: Testing links between lower-level personality traits and American political orientation. Journal of Personality, https://doi.org/10.1111/jopy.12613 First citation in articleCrossref, Google Scholar