In three studies, we examined (a) whether conservatives possess a stronger desire to share reality than liberals and are therefore more likely to perceive consensus with politically like-minded others even for non-political judgments and, if so, (b) whether motivated perceptions of consensus would give conservatives an edge in progressing toward collective goals. In Study 1, participants estimated ingroup consensus on non-political judgments. Conservatives perceived more ingroup consensus than liberals, regardless of the amount of actual consensus. The desire to share reality mediated the relationship between ideology and perceived ingroup consensus. Study 2 replicated these results and demonstrated that perceiving ingroup consensus predicted a sense of collective efficacy in politics. In Study 3, experimental manipulations of affiliative motives eliminated ideological differences in the desire to share reality. A sense of collective efficacy predicted intentions to vote in a major election. Implications for the attainment of shared goals are discussed.
AcevedoM.KruegerJ. I. (2004). Two egocentric sources of the decision to vote: The voter’s illusion and the belief in personal relevance. Political Psychology, 25, 115-134.
2.
AikenL.WestS. (1991). Multiple regression: Testing and interpreting interactions. Newbury Park, CA: SAGE.
3.
AllportG. W. (1954). The nature of prejudice. New York, NY: Holt.
4.
AloeA. M.BeckerB. J. (2012). An effect size for regression predictors in meta-analysis. Journal of Educational and Behavioral Statistics, 37, 278-297.
5.
AmbadyN.HallahanM.ConnerB. (1999). Accuracy of judgments of sexual orientation from thin slices of behavior. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 77, 538-547.
6.
AmesD. R.IyengarS. S. (2005). Appraising the unusual: Framing effects and moderators of uniqueness-seeking and social projection. Journal of Experimental Social Psychology, 4, 271-282.
7.
BanduraA. (1997). Self-efficacy: The exercise of control. New York, NY: W. H. Freeman.
8.
BanduraA. (2000). Exercise of human agency through collective efficacy. Current Directions in Psychological Science, 9, 75-78.
9.
BanfieldJ. C.KayA. C.CutrightK. M.WuE. C.FitzsimonsG. J. (2011). A person by situation account of motivated system defense. Social Psychological & Personality Science, 2, 212-219.
10.
BramelD. (1963). Selection of a target for defensive projection. Journal of Abnormal and Social Psychology, 66, 318-324.
11.
BuhrmesterM.KwangT.GoslingS. D. (2011). Amazon’s Mechanical Turk: A new source of inexpensive, yet high-quality, data?Perspectives on Psychological Science, 6, 3-5.
12.
ChenG.GullyS. M.EdenD. (2001). Validation of a new General Self-Efficacy Scale. Organizational Research Methods, 4, 62-83.
13.
EchterhoffG.HigginsE. T.LevineJ. M. (2009). Shared reality: Experiencing commonality with others’ inner states about the world. Perspectives on Psychological Science, 4, 496-521.
FeldmanS. (2003). Enforcing social conformity: A theory of authoritarianism. Political Psychology, 24, 41-74.
16.
FestingerL. (1950). Informal social communication. Psychological Review, 57, 271-282.
17.
FestingerL. (1954). A theory of social comparison processes. Human Relations, 7, 117-140.
18.
FinkelS. E. (1985). Reciprocal effects of participation and political efficacy: A panel analysis. American Journal of Political Science, 29, 891-913.
19.
FitzmauriceG. M.LairdN. M.WareJ. H. (2012). Applied longitudinal analysis. Hoboken, NJ: John Wiley.
20.
GibsonC. B.RandelA. E.EarleyP. C. (2000). Understanding group efficacy: An empirical test of multiple assessment methods. Group & Organization Management, 25, 67-97.
21.
GrahamJ.HaidtJ.NosekB. A. (2009). Liberals and conservatives rely on different sets of moral foundations. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 96, 1029-1046.
22.
HardinC. D.ConleyT. D. (2001). A relational approach to cognition: Shared experience and relationship affirmation in social cognition. In MoskowitzG. B. (Ed.), Cognitive social psychology: The Princeton symposium on the legacy and future of social cognition (pp. 3-17). Mahwah, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum.
23.
HardinC. D.HigginsE. T. (1996). Shared reality: How social verification makes the subjective objective. In SorrentinoR. M.HigginsE. T. (Eds.), Handbook of motivation and cognition: The interpersonal context (Vol. 3, pp. 28-84). New York, NY: Guilford Press.
24.
HarrisL. T.FiskeS. T. (2007). Social groups that elicit disgust are differentially processed in mPFC. Social Cognitive and Affective Neuroscience, 2, 45-51.
25.
HayesA. F. (2013). Introduction to mediation, moderation, and conditional process analysis. New York, NY: Guilford Press.
26.
JostJ. T. (2006). The end of the end of ideology. American Psychologist, 61, 651-670.
27.
JostJ. T.GlaserJ.KruglanskiA. W.SullowayF. J. (2003). Political conservatism as motivated social cognition. Psychological Bulletin, 129, 339-375.
28.
JostJ. T.LedgerwoodA.HardinC. D. (2008). Shared reality, system justification, and the relational basis of ideological beliefs. Social & Personality Psychology Compass, 2, 171-186.
29.
KennyD. A. (1994). Interpersonal perception: A social relations analysis. New York, NY: Guilford Press.
30.
KennyD. A.AcitelliL. K. (2001). Accuracy and bias in the perception of the partner in a close relationship. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 80, 439-448.
31.
KlineR. B. (2011). Principles and practice of structural equation modeling. New York, NY: Guilford Press.
32.
KruegerJ.ClementR. W. (1997). Estimates of social consensus by majorities and minorities: The case for social projection. Personality and Social Psychology Review, 1, 299-313.
33.
KruglanskiA. W.PierroA.MannettiL.De GradaE. (2006). Groups as epistemic providers: Need for closure and the unfolding of group-centrism. Psychological Review, 113, 84-100.
34.
MuthénL. K.MuthénB. O. (1998-2012). Mplus user’s guide (7th ed.). Los Angeles, CA: Author.
35.
OttatiV.FishbeinM.MiddlestadtS. E. (1988). Determinants of voters’ beliefs about the candidates’ stands on the issues: The role of evaluative bias heuristics and the candidates’ expressed message. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 55, 517-529.
PreacherK. J.RuckerD. D.HayesA. F. (2007). Addressing moderated mediation hypotheses: Theory, methods, and prescriptions. Multivariate Behavioral Research, 42, 185-227.
38.
QuattroneG. A.TverskyA. (1984). Causal versus diagnostic contingencies: On self-deception and on the voter’s illusion. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 46, 237-248.
39.
RobbinsJ. M.KruegerJ. I. (2005). Social projection to ingroups and outgroups: A review and meta-analysis. Personality and Social Psychology Review, 9, 32-47.
40.
RossL.GreeneD.HouseP. (1977). The “false consensus effect”: An egocentric bias in social perception and attribution processes. Journal of Experimental Social Psychology, 13, 279-301.
41.
RuleN. O.AmbadyN.AdamsR. B.Jr.MacraeC. N. (2008). Accuracy and awareness in the perception and categorization of male sexual orientation. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 95, 1019-1028.
42.
ShroutP. E.BolgerN. (2002). Mediation in experimental and nonexperimental studies: New procedures and recommendations. Psychological Methods, 7, 422-445.
43.
SinclairS.HuntsingerJ.SkorinkoJ.HardinC. D. (2005). Social tuning of the self: Consequences for the self-evaluations of stereotype targets. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 89, 160-175.
SternC.WestT. V.JostJ. T.RuleN. O. (2013). The politics of gaydar: Ideological differences in the use of gendered cues in categorizing sexual orientation. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 104, 520-541.
46.
SternC.WestT. V.SchmittP. G. (2014). The liberal illusion of uniqueness. Psychological Science, 25, 137-144.
47.
van ZomerenM.SpearsR.FischerA. H.LeachC. W. (2004). Put your money where your mouth is! Explaining collective action tendencies through group-based anger and group efficacy. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 87, 649-664.
Please find the following supplemental material available below.
For Open Access articles published under a Creative Commons License, all supplemental material carries the same license as the article it is associated with.
For non-Open Access articles published, all supplemental material carries a non-exclusive license, and permission requests for re-use of supplemental material or any part of supplemental material shall be sent directly to the copyright owner as specified in the copyright notice associated with the article.
