Perceiving Immigrants as a Threat: A Motivational Approach to False Consensus (Pre-Recorded)

• In Event: Immigration and National Identity

Abstract

The topic of false consensus holds an exclusive place in the field of political communication as it highlights the capacity of news media environment and interpersonal communication to influence citizens’ perception of the social norm and public opinion climate. Widely conceptualized as the tendency to overestimate the commonness of one’s own views (Ross, Greene & House, 1977; Krueger & Clement, 1994; Marks & Miller, 1987), false consensus has been extensively cited as one of the outcomes of selective exposure (Marks & Miller, 1987; Tsfati, Stroud & Chotiner, 2014) and ideologically like-minded communication networks (Wojcieszak, 2008; Wojcieszak, 2010). The recurring argument is that, people tend to be attracted to information sources that are consistent with their political views (Mutz, 2006; Bennett & Iyengar, 2008), and selectively exposing oneself to consonant opinions may shield her/him from differing opinions, which subsequently results in egocentric bias in social perception. Previous studies suggest that ideologically homogeneous online forums may exacerbate false consensus effect (Wojcieszak, 2008), and that encountering disagreement could mitigate the extent to which people overestimate public support for their own views (Mutz, 2002; Wojcieszak & Price, 2009).

While such studies provide useful insights into the relationship between interpersonal/mass-mediated communication and public opinion perception, they largely explain the false consensus phenomenon from the “cognitive availability” perspective – that is, how individuals employ the availability heuristic from an ideologically biased sample of information to estimate the prevalence of their own views (Marks & Miller, 1987) – which does not wholly address the motivational explanations to the consensus bias. Social scientists indicate “self-serving motive” as a key determinant of false consensus (Sherman, Presson & Chassin, 1984) and argue that one’s motivation to seek support for her/his own position, along with cognitive availability, may jointly explain overestimation of consensus (Krueger & Clement, 1997). “Perceived threat” serves as one of the most prevalent motivational determinants for the false consensus effect; people may often unknowingly exaggerate the perception of agreement with others when they perceive threat to the self or to their group to protect the ego and justify their views (Sherman et al., 1984). From this viewpoint, overestimation of consensus works as a “self-defense or self-enhancement mechanism” to minimize perceived threat (Mannarini, Roccato & Russo, 2015). We believe that the discussion of motivational factors to false consensus is particularly relevant in a political context, given that people are “highly motivated to perceive the world in ways that satisfy their [political] values” (Jost, Glaser, Kruglanski & Sulloway, 2003, p. 341).

The principal goal of the current study is to examine the role of motivational factors, notably perceived threat that stems from cognition, in fostering false consensus effects from the political communication perspective. Although some have explored into the motivational differences between conservatives and liberals to explain the association between political ideology and false consensus effect (Stern, West & Schmitt, 2014), we aim to further the existing literature by proposing and testing a mediation model that identifies both cognitive (perceived opinion climate) and motivational factors (perceived threat) through which political ideology relates to self-serving estimates of public opinion. To explore the link between perception of threat and false consensus, we conducted a national survey of U.S. adults, with specific aims to measure citizens’ opinions regarding “immigration” and their estimates of the percentage of Americans who agree with their opinions on immigration. Results suggest that motivational factors may play a greater role in false consensus than cognition when one perceives threat, and that conservatives are more sensitive to outgroup threat and thus are more likely to overestimate public consensus for their attitudes on immigrants than their ideological counterparts.

Authors

• Hyungjin Gill, University of Wisconsin - Madison

• Hernando Rojas, University of Wisconsin, Madison