How Many Agree With You?

Liberals and conservatives are both wrong about how mainstream their views are – but in different ways:

It isn’t just that liberals are more divided and conservatives are more united, it’s also that liberals believe they’re more divided, and conservatives believe they’re more unified, even when it’s not necessarily true. The study asked people about their opinions on a range of questions on both political and non-political topics, then asked them to guess what proportion of people who shared their general ideology agreed with them on that particular question. The results showed that liberals displayed a “truly false uniqueness effect”—they were more likely to think that their views were different from those of their peers, even when they weren’t—while conservatives displayed a “truly false consensus effect,” believing that their views were the same as their peers, even when they weren’t.

The authors also found evidence that the liberal false uniqueness effect has at least part of its origins in liberals’ personal desire to feel unique, as measured by a “need for uniqueness” scale. In other words, liberals who were more likely to see themselves as the type of person who’s different and special were more likely to think their opinions were unique as well.