False consensus in situational judgment tests: What would others do?

- We introduce a SJT response instruction based on the false consensus effect.
- The majority of participants showed a false consensus bias in SJT responses.
- A false consensus SJT is less susceptible to faking than a would-do SJT.
- A false consensus SJT shows adequate construct validity in high-stakes settings.
- A false consensus SJT predicts self-reported and behavioral outcomes.

We introduce an alternative response instruction to reduce the fakability of situational judgment tests. This novel instruction is based on the false consensus effect, a robust social psychological bias whereby people infer that the majority of other people's thoughts, attitudes, and behaviors are aligned with their own. In four studies, including both field and laboratory data (total N = 882), we demonstrate that participants show a false consensus bias when asked what others would do in situational judgment tests. Furthermore, the situational judgment test based on the false consensus effect turned out to relatively difficult to be fake, and produced scores that were meaningfully correlated with conceptually related traits, as well as both self-reported and behavioral outcomes.