When consensus counts: Exploring the impact of consensus claims in advertising

Consensus claims are broad declarative statements used in an advertisement purporting that a majority of a certain group of consumers prefer or use the sponsor's product or service. While consensus claims are frequently used by advertisers, little is known about how they operate or their effectiveness. We utilize attribution theory to provide insight about how consensus claims operate, and to investigate the impact of consensus claims on attributions and brand attitudes. Results suggest consensus claims are an effective advertising strategy, but their persuasive impact varies according to the featured social information and the processing motivation of audience members.     

The malleable influence of social consensus on attitude certainty

People often reflect on the opinions of others and express greater attitude certainty when they perceive their attitudes to be shared by others (high attitude consensus). The present research tests the possibility that either high or low attitude consensus can increase attitude certainty depending on people's salient social identification needs. In particular, high attitude consensus with a target group is found to be more validating when people seek to belong to the group, as this identification motive promotes a search for similarities between themselves and the group. In contrast, low attitude consensus with a target group is found to be more validating when people seek to be unique from a group, as this identification motive promotes a search for dissimilarities between themselves and the group. Two experiments support these hypotheses, offering insight into the intra-personal motives that alter the diagnostic value of social consensus information.     

The legal consensus about foregoing life-sustaining treatment: its status and its prospects

The legal consensus that has evolved through adjudication and legislation since the Karen Quinlan case in 1976 is founded on the premise that there is a bright line between passive euthanasia and active euthanasia. Indeed, the term passive euthanasia is often eschewed in favor of less emotionally-laden terminology such as "forgoing life-sustaining treatment" or "terminating life support" so as to further sever any possible connection with active euthanasia. Legal approval has been bestowed upon passive euthanasia under certain circumstances while active euthanasia is routinely condemned. This consensus was put to a test in 1990 when the United States Supreme Court ruled on the Cruzan case. However, the Court's narrow decision did not upset the consensus, and in the most significant appellate decisions handed down by state courts since Cruzan, there has been a reaffirmation--and possibly even an extension--of the consensus. Two other threats to the legal consensus about forgoing life-sustaining treatment have begun to manifest themselves: the increasing pressure for mercy killing and "futility" cases. Both of these challenge the fundamental premises on which the consensus is grounded.     

Sensitive Caregiving Fosters the Comprehension of Speech: When Gestures Speak Louder than Words

Despite a variety of theoretical arguments to the contrary, sensitive caregiving makes an important contribution to the comprehension and emergence of speech. This research, informed by social ecological realism, documented that during the prelinguistic and one-word periods, caregivers routinely provided additional perceptual structure to their infants following communicative breakdowns. This sensitive adjusting of subsequent messages to infants contributed significantly to reaching a common understanding. Caregivers also modified their verbal messages in subsequent turns by making them more specific. In contrast, however, these elaborations did not contribute to achieving a practical consensus regarding ongoing events. These results suggest that the social ecological realist approach informing this research has important implications for theory, reviewing past empirical findings and future research. © 1996 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

In search of the false-uniqueness phenomenon: fear and estimates of social consensus

An examination of the social perception literature yields little evidence for the false-uniqueness phenomenon (Valins & Nisbett, 1972), the perception that one's attributes are more unique than is the case. In contrast, the tendency for individuals to project their own characteristics onto other people and assume that more people are like themselves is a robust phenomenon. One reason researchers may not have found false uniqueness is that they have not looked at the accuracy of consensus estimates. A close look at the results of Tabachnik, Crocker, and Alloy (1983) and Sanders and Mullen (1983), who did assess accuracy, suggests that people possessing undesirable attributes over-estimate consensus, whereas people holding desirable attributes underestimate consensus. The latter pattern is a form of false uniqueness. In this study we looked at the accuracy of social consensus estimates in the context of psychological fears. A sample of subjects filled out an abbreviated version of a fear survey and made estimates of consensus. The results showed that both high- and low-fear respondents overestimated the incidence of high fear among their peers, but high-fear subjects were more inaccurate in their estimates. A false-uniqueness effect was found on the part of low-fear subjects, as they tended to underestimate the incidence of low fear among their peers. These findings are consistent with a motivational interpretation that emphasizes the individual's need to justify or normalize stigmatized behavior and to bolster perceived self-competence.     

Beliefs about the social orientations of others: A parametric test of the triangle,false consensus,and cone hypotheses

This study tests a number of hypotheses proposed in the literature concerning the relationship between an actor's social orientation and her beliefs about the social orientations of others. In contrast to the existing literature, this study employs a parametric approach with an innovative methodology. First, the social orientation parameters of actors are estimated: the weights respondents add to (1) the outcomes of Alter and to (2) the absolute difference between the outcomes for Ego and Alter. Then, the mean and the variance of the distribution of beliefs about the social orientation parameters of others are estimated, conditional on the actor's social orientation parameters. The results show that (1) there is a positive association between an actor's social orientation and her belief about the mean of the social orientations of others and (2) those who have approximately zero social orientation parameter values (individualists) expect the variation of others' social orientations to be lower than those with smaller (competitors) or larger (cooperators/egalitarians) social orientation parameter values. These results support the cone model, which models the “false” consensus effect where the “false” consensus is highest for individualists.     

Towards consensus in conceptualizing and operationalizing physical activity maintenance

Recognized challenges in promoting long-term physical activity maintenance may be due to inconsistencies in the conceptualization and operationalization of behavior maintenance terminology in physical activity research. The overall goal of this paper is to propose a framework and agenda for the development of a common set of terms, definitions, and measures for physical activity maintenance concepts that can be widely tested and evaluated. To initiate this effort, this paper (1) provides an overview of conceptual and operational definitions of physical activity maintenance used in the empirical literature, (2) evaluates whether behavior maintenance terms used in addiction science can be translated to physical activity, (3) recommends research directions for developing consensus definitions of physical activity maintenance, and (4) proposes a conceptual model of physical activity maintenance with inflection points that require operational definitions to be decided upon through consensus efforts in the field. Consensus over the conceptualization and operationalization of physical activity maintenance is needed to draw conclusions regarding which policies and programs are best able to promote long-term behavior change.     

The development of adaptive conformity in young children: effects of uncertainty and consensus

Human culture relies on extensive use of social transmission, which must be integrated with independently acquired (i.e. asocial) information for effective decision‐making. Formal evolutionary theory predicts that natural selection should favor adaptive learning strategies, including a bias to copy when uncertain, and a bias to disproportionately copy the majority (known as ‘conformist transmission’). Although the function and causation of these evolved strategies has been comparatively well studied, little is known of their development. We experimentally investigated the development of the bias to copy‐when‐uncertain and conformist transmission in children from the ages of 3 to 7, testing predictions derived from theoretical models. Children first attempted to solve a binary‐choice quantity discrimination task themselves using asocial information, but were then given the decisions of informants, and an opportunity to revise their answer. We investigated whether children's revised judgments were adaptively contingent on (i) the difficulty of the trial and (ii) the degree of consensus amongst informants. As predicted, older but not younger children copied others more on more difficult trials than on easier trials, even though older children also showed a tendency to stick with their initial, asocial decision. We also found that older children, like adults, were disproportionately receptive to non‐total majorities (i.e. were conformist) whereas younger children were receptive only to total (i.e. unanimous) majorities. We conclude that, whilst the mechanism for incorporating social information into decision‐making is initially very blunt, across the course of early childhood it converges on the adaptive learning mechanisms observed in adults and predicted by cultural evolutionary theory. A video abstract of this article can be viewed at http://youtu.be/Qb6JINGYqVk     

Raising Hope: Hope Inducement and Voter Turnout

Politicians routinely invoke hope on the campaign trail, presumably because they believe that inducements of hope attract supporters and impel citizens to the polls. Social psychologists and political scientists similarly posit that activating positive emotions like hope and other powerful psychological mechanisms has the capacity to stimulate prosocial behavior, like voting in elections. In this study, I subject these claims to empirical scrutiny by designing and implementing a series of randomized field experiments to examine whether inducing hope raises electoral participation. Overall, I find little evidence that hope affects voting behavior, but I acknowledge the null effects may reflect the [im]potency of the treatment.     

Punishment as restoration of group and offender values following a transgression: value consensus through symbolic labelling and offender reform

Justice theory has suggested that transgressions pose a threat to the shared values that underlie broken rules or laws, suggesting that in order to address concerns over the values violated by an offence, perceived consensus regarding those values must be reaffirmed. However, little empirical research has been conducted examining how legal responses can address those value concerns. In the current research we argue that punishments, as a common response to injustice, can reaffirm perceived value consensus through two routes: (1) by symbolically labelling the offence as against group values, thus reinforcing values towards observers and (2) by attempting to reform the offender, thus reinforcing values towards the offender. Consistent with this argument, three empirical studies showed that the public and inclusive nature of punishment helps restore a perceived value consensus as such characteristics facilitate these two processes. Moreover, these characteristics had a positive effect on perceived punishment appropriateness particularly when value concerns were heightened. These findings implicate symbolic labelling and offender reform as two processes by which punishments can restore the perception of value consensus and suggest that these processes are integral to justice restoration through punishment when value consensus is a dominant concern. Copyright © 2008 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Posterior probabilities for a consensus ordering

In the situation where subjects independently rank order a fixed set of items, the idea of a consensus ordering of the items is defined and employed as a parameter in a class of probability models for rankings. In the context of such models, which generalize those of Mallows, posterior probabilities may be easily formed about the population consensus ordering. An example of rankings obtained by the Graduate Record Examination Board is presented to demonstrate the adequacy of these generalized Mallows' models for describing actual data sets of rankings and to illustrate convenient summaries of the posterior probabilities for the consensus ordering.The authors thank Leann Birch for permission to refer to her experiment on cracker preferences, and the Graduate Record Examination Board for permission to use primary data from the Pike Report in our example. We also thank the referees for helpful comments.     

DIFFERENTIAL RESPONSE PATTERNS TO THE CONTROL CONDITION BETWEEN TWO PROCEDURES TO ASSESS SOCIAL REINFORCERS FOR CHILDREN WITH AUTISM

Historically, reinforcer assessment procedures focus primarily on identifying nonsocial reinforcers (e.g., tangibles and edibles). Far less empirical attention has been allocated to the systematic identification of social consequences that function as reinforcers. This discrepancy is problematic given that social consequences are commonly incorporated into behavioral treatment programs without systematic evaluation of their efficacy. In this study, two methodologies (a single operant and a concurrent choice) were used to assess social reinforcers for children with autism. Results highlighted differences in response allocation to the control condition between procedures. Specifically, responding occurred in the control condition of the single‐operant procedure but not in the concurrent‐operant procedure. These differences highlight the need for further evaluation of procedures to assess social reinforcers. Copyright © 2013 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Modeling consensus emergence in groups using longitudinal multilevel methods

Organizational researchers have long been interested in studying bottom‐up multilevel processes where lower level units (e.g., employees) in organizations interact to jointly create characteristics of higher level units (e.g., work groups). This article contributes to the literature on bottom‐up processes by detailing a statistical approach—the consensus emergence model (CEM)—that allows researchers to study emergence of shared perceptions and feelings or climates in groups over time. The described methodological approach extends standard multilevel methodology by examining residual variances within a growth model to account for dynamic change in group consensus. The CEM provides a formal test for consensus emergence. The approach also allows researchers to test explanatory models of consensus emergence by including person‐level, group‐level, and observation‐level predictors. We illustrate the CEM by applying the method to data from two longitudinal studies of work units. The first study investigated job satisfaction in military companies. Our second study examined professional archeologists working in groups on a field excavation mission and focused on fatigue at the end of the work day. Our analyses demonstrate the CEM's ability to detect and study emergence, and suggest that the CEM may be a valuable tool to help extend the study of emergence in organizational research.     

The epistemic significance of consensus

Philosophers have often noted that science displays an uncommon degree of consensus on beliefs among its practitioners. Yet consensus in the sciences is not a goal in itself. I consider cases of consensus on beliefs as concrete events. Consensus on beliefs is neither a sufficient nor a necessary condition for presuming that these beliefs constitute knowledge. A concrete consensus on a set of beliefs by a group of people at a given historical period may be explained by different factors according to various hypotheses. A particularly interesting hypothesis from an epistemic perspective is the knowledge hypothesis: shared knowledge explains a consensus on beliefs. If all the alternative hypotheses to the knowledge hypotheses are false or are not as good in explaining a concrete consensus on beliefs, the knowledge hypothesis is the best explanation of the consensus. If the knowledge hypothesis is best, a consensus becomes a plausible, though fallible, indicator of knowledge. I argue that if a consensus on beliefs is uncoerced, uniquely heterogeneous and large, the gap between the likelihood of the consensus given the knowledge hypothesis and its likelihoods given competing hypotheses tends to increase significantly. Consensus is a better indicator of knowledge than “success” or “human flourishing”.     

Application of the consensus Rorschach to couples

The consensus method of administering the Rorschach is described and the literature reviewed. The consensus method is viewed as an adaptation of the Rorschach as a form of behavioral assessment, especially as regards couple interaction. Materials on two couples are presented as illustrations.     

Fixed Effects vs. Random Effects Meta-Analysis Models: Implications for Cumulative Research Knowledge

Research conclusions in the social sciences are increasingly based on meta-analysis, making questions of the accuracy of meta-analysis critical to the integrity of the base of cumulative knowledge. Both fixed effects (FE) and random effects (RE) meta-analysis models have been used widely in published meta-analyses. This article shows that FE models typically manifest a substantial Type I bias in significance tests for mean effect sizes and for moderator variables (interactions), while RE models do not. Likewise, FE models, but not RE models, yield confidence intervals for mean effect sizes that are narrower than their nominal width, thereby overstating the degree of precision in meta-analysis findings. This article demonstrates analytically that these biases in FE procedures are large enough to create serious distortions in conclusions about cumulative knowledge in the research literature. We therefore recommend that RE methods routinely be employed in meta-analysis in preference to FE methods.