Social Cognition
False Consensus Task
Also called: false consensus effect task, false consensus paradigm, social projection task, consensus estimation task, truly false consensus effect
Measure the false consensus effect across a study: participants answer everyday two-choice questions and estimate what percentage of the other participants gave the same answer.
4-6 minUntimed
Free to start: 10 free participants per account, then $0.99 per participant for academic research, or any yearly plan. Try it here first, with no account.
- Papers, 2021 to 2025
- 44
- Evidence grade
- D
- Registered clinical studies
- 0
What it measures
Collects what the false consensus effect is computed from. Participants answer 20 everyday two-choice questions, such as whether they squeeze toothpaste from the end or the middle, and after each one estimate what percentage of the other people in the study gave the same answer. The effect is computed across a study's participants, by comparing their estimates with the study's actual answers, so one session reports its answers and estimates; the main score is the mean estimate.
Constructs
- False consensus effect
- Social projection
- Perceived consensus
- Social judgment
Research uses
- Social cognition research
- Social projection and perceived norms research
- Cross-cultural comparison of perceived consensus
- Within-study group comparison
How the paradigm works
The false consensus task collects what the false consensus effect is computed from: people's answers about themselves and their estimates of how many others answered the same way. Ross, Greene and House (1977) found that people think their own choices are more common than people who chose differently think they are. In their Study 1, as Many Labs 2 reports it, 320 students estimated what percentage of their peers would choose each option of a story and then chose; those who chose the first option estimated that 65.7% would choose it, against 48.5% among those who chose the second. Many Labs 2 (Klein and colleagues, 2018) replicated the pattern with two of the original stories: 69.19% against 43.35% (7,205 people) and 72.48% against 48.76% (7,827 people). Krueger and Clement (1994) separated a truly false consensus effect from sound use of one's own answer as information about others: for each person, the correlation across items between their answers and the errors of their estimates against the actual shares. Here, each of 20 everyday questions written for this task, such as whether a tube of toothpaste is squeezed from the end or the middle, is answered with one of two buttons; no question has political, religious, health, money or group content or a right answer. The next screen asks what percentage of the other people in the study gave the same answer, typed as a whole number from 0 to 100. The questions come in an order drawn from the session's seed, and which answer is on the first button is drawn too, with answer a first on half the questions. The questions are written in each of the eight languages. One practice question comes first. There is no time limit.
More about the paradigm
The effect needs the study's own participants, so no single session computes it. A session reports its answers and estimates: the mean estimate (the main score), the share of answers the participant expected most of the others to share, and answer and estimate times. Each estimate row saves the question, the answer and the estimate in two forms: of the same answer, and of answer a. From a study's rows, Ross and colleagues' measure compares, question by question, the estimates of answer a made by people who chose a with those made by people who chose b. Krueger and Clement's measure takes, for each person, the correlation across questions between choosing answer a and the error of their estimate of answer a, the estimate minus the share of the study's other participants who chose a. Scores describe expectations about the other people in a study; they are research measures and do not diagnose.
Scores
- Mean Consensus Estimate%
- The mean, over the questions, of the estimated percentage of the study's other participants who gave the same answer as the participant.
- Higher means more agreement expected; whether it is too high depends on the study's actual answers
- Answers Expected To Be Common%
- The share of questions whose estimate is above 50%: answers the participant expected most of the other participants to give too.
- Informational
- Median Answer Timems
- Median time from a question appearing to an answer being chosen, over answers at or after 100 ms.
- Informational
- Median Estimate Timems
- Median time from the estimate screen appearing to the estimate being submitted, over estimates at or after 100 ms.
- Informational
- Answers or Estimates Under 100 mscount
- Answers chosen or estimates submitted less than 100 ms after their screen appeared.
- 0 expected
- Questionscount
- Questions with an answer and an estimate, out of 20.
- Informational
Use and evidence
44 papers from 2021 to 2025 name this task in their title or abstract, up 26% compared with 2016 to 2020. That ranks it 315 of 495 test families in our census. See the counts for every test.
Show the numbers
| Year | Papers |
|---|---|
| 2025 | 13 |
| 2024 | 5 |
| 2023 | 9 |
| 2022 | 7 |
| 2021 | 10 |
| 2020 | 3 |
| 2019 | 8 |
| 2018 | 10 |
| 2017 | 7 |
| 2016 | 7 |
| 2015 | 8 |
| 2014 | 12 |
| 2013 | 9 |
| 2012 | 9 |
| 2011 | 9 |
| 2010 | 8 |
| 2009 | 5 |
| 2008 | 6 |
| 2007 | 7 |
| 2006 | 2 |
| 2005 | 6 |
| 2004 | 4 |
| 2003 | 3 |
| 2002 | 5 |
| 2001 | 5 |
| 2000 | 7 |
Use grade D
30 to 99 papers from 2021 to 2025.
Evidence grade D
Little published measurement evidence found.
- Papers on test-retest reliability
- 1
- Papers on reliability or validity
- 8
- Registered clinical studies using it as an outcome
- 0
How the grades work
Use: A is 1,000 or more papers from 2021 to 2025, B 300 to 999, C 100 to 299, D 30 to 99 and E fewer than 30. Evidence: A means at least 25 papers report its test-retest reliability and at least 25 registered clinical studies use it as an outcome; B, at least 8 test-retest papers, and either 5 registered clinical studies or 150 reliability or validity papers; C, at least 2 test-retest papers, 30 reliability or validity papers or 3 registered clinical studies; D, little published measurement evidence found. The counts measure use. They include every paper that names the task in its title or abstract. Grades describe the published research on this task, not ConductCognition's version of it.
Source: ConductCognition test census 0.22.0, counted 3 November 2026 from OpenAlex and ClinicalTrials.gov.
Task design
The trial sequence as the test runs in ConductCognition.
- Questions
- 20 written for this task, about everyday habits and preferences, such as whether a tube of toothpaste is squeezed from the end or the middle, each with two answers. No political, religious, health, money or group topics, and no right answer. They are shown in the session's language.
- Answer
- Two buttons, one per answer. Which answer is on the first button is drawn from the session's seed, with answer a first on half the questions.
- Estimate
- After each answer: what percentage of the other people in the study gave the same answer, typed as a whole number from 0 to 100.
- Order
- Each question once, in an order drawn from the session's seed. One practice question with its estimate comes first and is not scored.
- Scores
- The mean estimate, from 0 to 100, and the share of answers the participant expected most of the others to share. The false consensus effect itself is computed across the study's participants from the saved answers and estimates.
Ross, Greene and House (1977) and Many Labs 2 (Klein and colleagues, 2018) compared the estimates of people who gave each answer, and Krueger and Clement (1994) compared each person's estimates with the actual answers. Both need the study's own participants, so one session reports its answers and estimates, and a study computes the effect from the saved rows: for each question, the estimates of answer a by people who chose a against those by people who chose b, or for each person, the correlation between their answers and the errors of their estimates. The scores support research and do not diagnose.
Quality checks
Each session is marked valid, needs review or invalid, with the reason, before you see its scores.
Scored rows: the scored run's estimates, one per question. No answer or estimate is correct, so accuracy is not judged against chance. A run with estimates for fewer than half its planned questions is invalid and any other shortfall is flagged; nearly the same estimate for every question is flagged. Estimates under 200 ms on at least half the questions invalidate.
Why these rules
There is no correct option to compare with chance, so accuracy is not judged against chance. The scores describe what share of a study's other participants a person expects to answer as they did, so any estimate from 0 to 100 is a possible answer, and whether it overstates agreement can only be judged against the study's actual answers. Nearly one estimate for every question suggests the box was filled without reading; it is flagged for review because it can also be a real answer. An answer under 200 ms is faster than a simple visual reaction, so it cannot reflect the item. Following response-time effort screening for untimed tests (Wise and Kong 2005), the session is invalid only when at least half the answers are that fast.
No percentile. Scores and quality flags only.
Running this test
Settings you can change
This test runs with fixed settings.
Need a different version of this test?
Devices and languages
- Untimed test: runs on desktops, laptops, tablets and phones. Participant devices
- Languages: English, Spanish, French, German, Italian, Portuguese (Brazil), Chinese (Simplified) and Japanese.
- Available on: Every plan, including the free plan.
- No percentile. Scores and quality flags only. How norms work
- Recruiting online? See the setup guides for Prolific, Sona Systems, CloudResearch Connect and Qualtrics.
Cite and describe
Participants completed the False Consensus Task in a web browser (ConductCognition task version 1.0.0, scoring version 1.0.0; Ross L, Greene D, House P, 1977; Krueger J, Clement RW, 1994). The main score was mean consensus estimate (the mean, over the questions, of the estimated percentage of the study's other participants who gave the same answer as the participant).
ConductCognition versions: task version 1.0.0, scoring version 1.0.0. Every export records the versions each session used, for a methods section.
- Ross, L., Greene, D., & House, P. (1977). The "false consensus effect": An egocentric bias in social perception and attribution processes. Journal of Experimental Social Psychology, 13(3), 279-301. https://doi.org/10.1016/0022-1031(77)90049-X
- Mullen, B., Atkins, J. L., Champion, D. S., Edwards, C., Hardy, D., Story, J. E., & Vanderklok, M. (1985). The false consensus effect: A meta-analysis of 115 hypothesis tests. Journal of Experimental Social Psychology, 21(3), 262-283. https://doi.org/10.1016/0022-1031(85)90020-4The effect across 115 hypothesis tests.
- Krueger, J., & Clement, R. W. (1994). The truly false consensus effect: An ineradicable and egocentric bias in social perception. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 67(4), 596-610. https://doi.org/10.1037/0022-3514.67.4.596Comparing each person's estimates with the actual answers.
- Klein, R. A., Vianello, M., Hasselman, F., et al. (2018). Many Labs 2: Investigating variation in replicability across samples and settings. Advances in Methods and Practices in Psychological Science, 1(4), 443-490. https://doi.org/10.1177/2515245918810225The effect replicated across samples and settings.
- Bunker, C. J., & Varnum, M. E. W. (2021). How strong is the association between social media use and false consensus? Computers in Human Behavior, 125, 106947. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.chb.2021.106947Each item answered first and estimated second, with the truly false consensus effect computed per person.
Source papers
- Many Labs 2 (Klein and colleagues, 2018): with the supermarket story of Ross, Greene and House (1977), people who chose the first option estimated that 69.19% of others would choose it, against 43.35% among those who chose the second (7,205 people; d = 1.18).Paradigm source, Adults
Questions
How long does the False Consensus Task take?
About 4 to 6 minutes, as listed in the test library.
What device does a participant need?
Untimed test: runs on desktops, laptops, tablets and phones. The browser must be Chrome, Edge, Firefox or Safari.
What scores does it produce?
Mean Consensus Estimate, Answers Expected To Be Common, Median Answer Time, Median Estimate Time, Answers or Estimates Under 100 ms and Questions. Each session is also marked valid, needs review or invalid, with the reason.
How widely is the False Consensus Task used in research?
44 papers from 2021 to 2025 name it in their title or abstract, up 26% compared with 2016 to 2020. That ranks it 315 of 495 test families in the ConductCognition test census (use grade D). Source: ConductCognition test census 0.22.0, counted 3 November 2026 from OpenAlex and ClinicalTrials.gov.
How much reliability evidence does the False Consensus Task have?
In the published research, 1 paper reports its test-retest reliability and 0 registered clinical studies use it as an outcome (evidence grade D in the ConductCognition test census).
Does it report a percentile?
No. Scores and quality flags only.
Which languages can participants use?
Participants can take this test in English, Spanish, French, German, Italian, Portuguese (Brazil), Chinese (Simplified) and Japanese, with its words in the same language. English is on every plan, and the other languages come with yearly plans. Have a native speaker read the machine-translated text before launch.
Is this a clinical test?
No. ConductCognition is for research use only. It runs, scores and exports the test; clinical interpretation is outside the platform.
Every test: the full test list.
Run this test in your next study
Start free with 10 free participants on any test, then use participant credits or a yearly plan.