Abstract
The purpose of this study is to reveal the way people make consensus estimates when they receive other individual's judgment (other-judgment). Will they find other-judgment as informative as their own judgment (self-judgment) in estimating social consensus? As to this point, previous researches have not yet reached any consistent view. We proposed a new viewpoint that the perceiver's group numerical status has an important influence on his/her perception of self-judgment and other-judgment. In our experiment, after subjects made self-judgments, they were informed whether their self-judgment belongs to a numerical majority or minority, and, in addition, they were provided with one example of other-judgment which could be either congruent or incongruent to their self-judgment. As predicted, the subjects regarding themselves belonging to the majority relied more heavily on self-judgment and hardly used other-judgment, and thus consistently perceived high consensus in accord with their own judgments. On the other hand, subjects belonging to the minority considered both self-judgment and other-judgment, and modified the degree to which others agreed with their own judgments. We discuss the implications of these findings in the intergroup context of consensus estimates and stereotyping studies.
