A pseudoconsensus is a false consensus, reached most commonly when members of a group feel they are expected to go along with the majority decision, as when the
voting basis
Voting is a method by which a group, such as a meeting or an electorate, can engage for the purpose of making a collective decision or expressing an opinion usually following discussions, debates or election campaigns. Democracies elect holder ...
is a large
supermajority and nothing can be done unless some of the members of the minority acquiesce. This can cause problems such as the
Abilene paradox
In the Abilene paradox, a group of people collectively decide on a course of action that is counter to the preferences of many or all of the individuals in the group. It involves a common breakdown of group communication in which each member mistak ...
.
Robert's Rules of Order
''Robert's Rules of Order'', often simply referred to as ''Robert's Rules'', is a manual of parliamentary procedure by U.S. Army officer Henry Martyn Robert.
"The object of Rules of Order is to assist an assembly to accomplish the work for whic ...
notes that this was part of the impetus for switching from consensus to majority as the voting basis in the
British House of Lords:
The book ''Creating a Life Together: Practical Tools to Grow Ecovillages'' identifies pseudoconsensus as a problem that can occur in communal environments with a consensus voting basis. Various forms of pseudoconsensus identified were the Big League Complex; Decision by Endurance; Everyone Decides Everything; and "I Block, I Block!"
See also
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Consensus decision-making
Consensus decision-making or consensus process (often abbreviated to ''consensus'') are group decision-making processes in which participants develop and decide on proposals with the aim, or requirement, of acceptance by all. The focus on e ...
*
False-consensus effect
In psychology, the false consensus effect, also known as consensus bias, is a pervasive cognitive bias that causes people to “see their own behavioral choices and judgments as relatively common and appropriate to existing circumstances”. In o ...
*
Groupthink
Groupthink is a psychological phenomenon that occurs within a group of people in which the desire for harmony or conformity in the group results in an irrational or dysfunctional decision-making outcome. Cohesiveness, or the desire for cohesiveness ...
*
Pluralistic ignorance
In social psychology, pluralistic ignorance refers to a situation in which the minority position on a given topic is wrongly perceived to be the majority position or where the majority position is wrongly perceived to be the minority position. Thi ...
References
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Consensus