False consensus on sexual behavior among college women: Comparison of four theoretical explanations

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Abstract
False consensus refers to the tendency of people to overestimate the population prevalence of their own opinions, preferences, and behaviors. Four explanations have been proposed for this phenomenon: selective exposure to others who believe and act similarly, the salience of one's own beliefs and behaviors, logical information processing about the perceived causes of behavior, and motivation to justify nonnormative beliefs and behaviors. Female participants (n = 260) completed a questionnaire regarding their sexual experiences and perceptions of their peers' sexual activity. They also completed measures of selective exposure, salience of their own sexual behaviors, information processing, and motivation for false consensus. The results replicated previous findings of overestimation of the level of peer sexual activity and of false consensus on sexual behavior among young women: Sexually experienced women made higher estimates of peer sexual activity than did sexually inexperienced women. In addition, the results provided evidence supporting the selective‐exposure explanation but no evidence to support any of the other explanations.