Beware of false consensus and pluralistic ignorance
Many decisions we make about websites are based on second-guessing what other people will find useful, intuitive and engaging. However, psychological research shows us our intuition and internal group-think may not be a good basis for decision-making.
False consensus
In 1931 the psychologists Daniel Katz and Floyd H. Allport published a study called Students’ Attitudes. Katz and Allport had surveyed thousands of students at Syracuse University about a broad range of topics, such as academic life, religion and co-education, and their book presented the results. One of the topics they asked about was cheating.
They found that students who admitted cheating thought that most other people cheated, whereas the ones who said they didn’t cheat thought that most other people didn’t cheat. The students appeared to be projecting their own views on others.
This observation was taken up in the 1970s by Lee Ross, David Greene and Pamela House. They gave students a series of scenarios and asked them what they thought their peers would do in each scenario. One scenario, for example, was:
As you are leaving your neighborhood supermarket a man in a business suit asks you whether you like shopping in that store. You reply quite honestly that you do like shopping there and indicate that in addition to being close to your home the supermarket seems to have very good meats and produce at reasonably low prices. The man then reveals that a videotape crew has filmed your comments and asks you to sign a release allowing them to use the unedited film for a TV commercial that the supermarket chain is preparing.
What percentage of your peers would sign the release? What percentage would not?
Students were later asked what they themselves would do, and assign personality characteristics to people who took either decision.
The researchers found what they called “false consensus”: people exaggerated their ability to second-guess other people (they assumed other people were like them), and they viewed people who didn’t think the same as them as odd, wrong or biased.
False consensus is a cognitive bias where you exaggerate your ability to guess what other people think. What’s more, when you find you have predicted other people wrongly, instead of saying to yourself, “Oh, I got that wrong” and modifying your opinion, you dismiss these people as ignorant or exceptions, and persist with the same opinion you had before.
Pluralistic ignorance
False consensus happens when we project our beliefs on others. However, pluralistic ignorance happens when we misinterpret the community around us. The starting point is our perceptions of the world around us rather than our beliefs.
The classic study on this is Prentice and Miller (1993), who conducted a questionnaire at Princeton University where they asked students about their attitude to drinking alcohol. The students were asked for their own opinion, and then what they thought the opinions of other students were. For example, a question was “How acceptable do you think it is to get drunk at a party?” and then: “How acceptable does the typical Princeton student think it is to get drunk at a party?”.
They found that most students were not comfortable with drinking a lot, but thought that most other people were, and thought it was fun. Consequently, they conformed to the drinking culture because they thought others approved it.
The university was able to change the drink culture by publicising the statistics from Prentice and Miller’s research. They posted messages around the campus like, “Most Princeton students have 0–3 drinks when they party”.
Pluralistic ignorance is when people conform to an opinion they privately don’t agree with, because they think they are odd or in the minority, when in fact most people think like them.
How these theories relate to website development
Here is a common scenario you come across in user testing. Let’s say you are testing a form with a blue button in it. Here is a dialogue with two users.
User 1
User: “Oh, that’s a horrible blue on that button. No-one will like that blue.”
You: “I noticed you took a second or two to find the button.”
User: “Well, why did you put it over there? People won’t see it there. It would be much better over here. Everyone will see it if you put it there.”
User 2
User: “I must warn you, I don’t know anything about websites. It’s no use asking me about websites.”
You: “It’s fine. You don’t need to. You are testing the website, not the other way round!…I noticed you clicked on that button. What do you think of the colour?”
User: “Oh, I think that’s a lovely blue, and it makes it stand out.”
You: “You didn’t take long to find the button. Would you have found it even quicker if it was anywhere else?”
User: “No, I thought it was obvious where it was, but that’s probably just me!”
User 1 displayed false consensus. They have an exaggerated idea of their ability to second-guess other people. User 2 shows pluralistic ignorance. They are self-effacing, think they are in the minority and are hesitant to express their real views.
When you are assessing your own site you have to bear in mind these two phenomena. Often a more opinionated person will declare that everything is fine and that any negative feedback can be discarded because it came from people who are atypical, or not the target audience, or not knowledgable about web design.
This person may be in a meeting with less self-confident or less senior people who go along with them because they think everyone else agrees with them, and that they themselves probably have an eccentric, uninformed opinion.
The way out of this is to assume you don’t know anything about other people. Every guess you have is just a working hypothesis to be tested. Other people (users and staff) are a hugely valuable resource for feedback and ideas. You need to create an environment where everyone is encouraged to give feedback and the feedback is treated seriously.
Case study: resistance to evidence
A friend worked on the website of a major national charity in the UK. The web developers went through a redesign with an external agency. After several months they come up with a new swish design with an eye-catching banner photograph on every page.
Just before launch, they organised a user testing session and found that people were getting lost and confused on the site. It turned out they didn’t notice the main navigation because it was a thin bar above the banner photograph. Their eyes skimmed right past it, and they looked for main links in the page body.
What was interesting was the response of the web team and agency: they dismissed the testers as not representative, and kept the design as it was.
Look for evidence that you’re wrong
The philosopher of science Karl Popper (1902-94) emphasised the importance of falsifiability in scientific theories. It is relatively easy to gather evidence that supports a theory, he said, but the real test of a theory is if there is evidence against it. A mass of evidence for a theory does not prove it, but a single piece of counter-evidence could disprove it.
The example that Popper gives is of white swans. We could keep going to the same lakes and rivers and see only white swans, and think “all swans are white”. But if we actively followed up reports of black swans then we might discover a black swan, and our theory is disproved.
There is much more to Popper’s theory, of course, but the lesson in web development is to keep looking for evidence that you’re wrong, and that your site isn’t working as well as you think. You need to keep checking by listening to feedback and watching people use the site. It’s criticism that will help you improve the site, not defensiveness or self-delusion.
References
- Katz, D., & Allport, F. H. (1931). Students’ attitudes: A report of the Syracuse University reaction study. Syracuse, NY: Craftsman Press.
- Prentice, D. A., & Miller, D. T. (1993). Pluralistic ignorance and alcohol use on campus: Some consequences of misperceiving the social norm. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 64(2), 243–256. https://doi.org/10.1037/0022-3514.64.2.243
Note: perhaps a weakness of these studies is they are on students. It would have been interesting if they’d done them on a middle-aged cohort as well, to see if people generally become more self-aware as they get older, and more confident in expressing their own views.