The Allure of Consensus: People (Over)Seek Consensus in Selecting Group Persuasion Strategies

How do people select targets when tasked with persuading a group of people? One approach would be to prioritize getting people in support of the persuader's position to hold relatively extreme attitudes-an extremity strategy. An alternative approach would be to prioritize getting as many people as possible to support the persuader's position, regardless of how extreme they are-a consensus strategy. Although some situations might allow persuaders to combine these strategies, the present work examines how people select targets and strategies when a natural trade-off exists between acquiring fewer people with more extreme attitudes versus more people with less extreme attitudes. Prior work suggests that potential advantages exist for both extremity and consensus strategies. However, the current research finds that people exhibit a strong preference for a consensus strategy when tasked with selecting targets in group persuasion contexts. Further, this preference prevails even when consensus strategies would backfire and cause one's persuasive efforts to fail. This allure of consensus is demonstrated across eight primary experiments, which also reveal why people are drawn to a consensus strategy as well as explore potential boundary conditions for this preference. This work has implications for understanding how persuaders select targets and strategies in the context of group persuasion. In addition, the paradigms and results invite a host of new avenues for future research.