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

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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, and whether the overestimation increases with increased online participation. Although the analyzed sample overestimates public support, the overestimation 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 ndings 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 and Clement 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 participants 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 Annenberg School for Communication, as well as three anonymous reviewers and the editor. Address correspondence to Magdalena Wojcieszak; e-mail: magdalena@asc.upenn.edu.

doi:10.1093/poq/nfn056 Advance Access publication November 25, 2008 C The Author 2008. Published by Oxford University Press on behalf of the American Association for Public Opinion Research. All rights reserved. For permissions, please e-mail: journals.permissions@oxfordjournals.org

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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 in ideologically 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 participants in neo-Nazi and radical environmentalist online discussion forums.1 Contextualizing the ndings suggests that although the analyzed sample overestimates public support, the overestimation is no greater than found among more conventional populations in previous research. Online participation and ideological extremism are also found to play important roles, although differently 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), environmental problems (Glynn and Park 1997), space exploration, paying a trafc ticket, or appearing in a supermarket commercial (Ross, Greene, and House 1977). Meta-analyses concerned with relative differences between supporters and opponents nd 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 disagreed said that 67 percent would also refuse (Ross et al. 1977). City respondents 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 supporters and opponents or the association between ones own attitude and its estimate. This approach also shows the factual discrepancy with public opinion, not tapped by measures that calculate the difference between own and perceived opinions.

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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 people 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 separates 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 refused overestimated the consensus for their refusal by 25 percent (Goethals 1986). Similarly, the majority underestimated the factual consensus on sociopolitical 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 populations. 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 effect? Existing theory and research would suggest this to be the case. For one, false consensus results from ego-defensive or dissonance-reducing motivations to justify ones views and from selective exposure to consonant opinions (Marks and Miller 1987). Both mechanisms occur within homogeneous online communities. 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 Schuman 1976; Taylor 1982), and also by the lack of information that would demonstrate to people that their personal opinions are not as prevalent as they would like to believe (Marks and Miller 1987). These conditions are also met in ideologically homogeneous online groups. Because participants radicalize (see Turner 1991;

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Wojcieszak forthcoming), they are condent 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 should be 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 compiled by rst 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 resulted 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 homogeneous (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 overestimating public support for ones own views, the difference scores between respondents estimates and the factual public opinion distribution were calculated.

2. The forums were identied by an online search and web graph analysis using the Issue Crawler software. 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 within a domain (Rogers and Marres 2000). Web graph analysis yielded leading forums within each ideology, pointed to others not found in the basic search, and assured that the sampling frame on the forum level is comprehensive with 10 neo-Nazi and 9 environmentalist forums.

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Using standard wording from studies on false consensus, participants in neoNazi 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. These questions were adapted from Pew Research Center, which found that 44 percent 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 globalization as good and 31 percent regarded it as bad (August 2002).3 The nal 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 addressing such issues as the frequency and the amount of time spent online. These were assessed by two questions: During the past week, how many times did you enter this forum and other forums that address political 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 rst 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 nal measure was created by averaging the responses (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 country, 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 dont know/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 good thing, somewhat good, somewhat bad or a very bad thing? (August 2002). Again the distribution was dichotomized with very good and somewhat good combined into good, somewhat bad and very bad into bad, and dont know/refused (13 percent) randomly divided.

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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 a seven-point scale ranging from 1 (strongly disagree) to 7 (strongly agree), their agreement with 10 ideology-specic statements. Examples include Violence 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 sacricing 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 questionnaire). The nal measure, created from averaging the responses, ranged from 1 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 perspectives and whether their overestimations increase with online participation. Because respondents estimates and also the public opinion distributions obtained from Pew Research Center were issue specic, neo-Nazis and environmentalists 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 support for their positions. Neo-Nazis overestimated the proportion of the population 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. Environmentalists 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 signicantly predicted overestimating public support for neo-Nazi positions, with age also being an important predictor. How large are the effects? From the coefcients it can be calculated that every 10 years of age, overestimation can be expected to increase by roughly 5 percent. In comparison, there is a 27.5 percent increase in overestimating racially intolerant attitudes from those least to most involved in neo-Nazi online forums. Given that the mean overestimation among the neo-Nazis was 6 percent, the increase due to online participation is substantial. Among the environmentalists, age was a signicant predictor, with the coefcient suggesting that, all else constant, a

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Table I. Predicting False Consensus

Neo-Nazis Model 1 Before-entry b (SE) Age Education Gender Income Online Participation First Block R2 (%) Extremism Incremental R2 (%) Final R2 (%) 0.53 (0.19) 0.91 (0.92) 3.83 (7.15) 1.64 (1.55) 5.50 (2.00) 18.6 Model 2 Final b (SE) 0.50 (0.19) 1.00 (0.90) 3.81 (7.03) 1.30 (1.53) 4.12 (2.08) 4.58 (2.18) 3.4 22.0 18.4 Environmentalists Model 1 Before-entry b (SE) 0.68 (0.21) 0.23 (0.86) 2.93 (4.84) 1.93 (1.66) 0.19 (1.74) 13.6 Model 2 Final b (SE) 0.60 (0.21) 0.71 (0.87) 4.73 (4.81) 1.93 (1.64) 0.18 (1.70) 3.93 (1.83) 4.8

NOTE.Entries are unstandardized OLS regression coefcients with standard errors in parentheses. p 0.001, p .01, p .05

40-year-old environmentalist would overestimate public discontent with globalization 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 overestimating 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 extreme, online participation remained signicant. This indicates that those who are very involved in neo-Nazi online groups are more likely to exhibit false consensus even after controlling for extremism and sociodemographics. For environmentalists, as model 2 demonstrates, it was the extremism that predicted false consensus. Interestingly, however, the negative coefcient indicates that as environmentalists became more radical their estimates became lower, with

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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 participants 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 consensus. 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 environmentalists 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 overestimate public support for their views is not substantially greater than what one would expect to nd among a more conventional sample. This nding 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 nding might cast doubt on the concerns regarding fragmentation and polarization potentially occurring online, another nding 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, the most engaged neo-Nazis overestimate public discontent with equal rights by an additional 21 percent, accounting for sociodemographic characteristics and ideological extremism. At the same time, online participation does not exacerbate false consensus among the environmentalists. It is their extremism that

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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 ndings cannot be generalized to other populations. Also, even though there is an association between participation in neo-Nazi online groups and false consensus, the crosssectional 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 ndings 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 Relay Chat) chats. Because those online spaces are less populated, the number of respondents was insufcient to conduct analyses.4 Despite these limitations, this study has several noteworthy implications. Contrary to expectations, some radical ideologues active in homogeneous online 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 being analyzed. It is such factors as reinforcing communicative environments or extremism that may affect the extent to which people attribute their own views to others. For some individuals, processes occurring within ideologically homogeneous online communities, such as exposure to consonant opinions or assessing public opinion based on an inaccurate sampling frame, might exacerbate false consensus. Because voluntary political associations in general tend to involve reinforcement, research should determine whether people active in face-to-face organizations overestimate public support to a different extent than those from online groups. To address the debate on the relative perils presented by online selectivity, studies should also assess whether reinforcing interactions exacerbate false consensus differently among participants 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 specic. Perhaps some individuals or
4. Participants in such groups are not likely to substantially differ from discussion forums participants because there is a high degree of overlap, with neo-Nazis and environmentalists utilizing both forms of computer-mediated communication (CMC). In the recruitment process, many individuals voiced that they had already been contacted through discussion forums or chats rooms. Also, the forums often contained postings inviting the members to enter a specic IRC channel.

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groups prefer to see their strongly held opinions as unique (Suls and Wan 1987) and benet from portraying public opinion climate as hostile. The continued debates regarding polarization in the online and ofine environment make studies on false consensus and the factors that affect it both necessary and timely.

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

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