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 the process of choosing officials or policies by casting a ballot, a document used by people to formally express their preferences. Republics and representative democracies are governments where the population chooses representatives ...
is a large
supermajority
A supermajority is a requirement for a proposal to gain a specified level of support which is greater than the threshold of one-half used for a simple majority. Supermajority rules in a democracy can help to prevent a majority from eroding fun ...
and nothing can be done unless some of the members of the minority acquiesce. This can cause problems such as the
Abilene paradox
The Abilene paradox is a collective fallacy, in which a group of people collectively decide on a course of action that is counter to the preferences of most or all individuals in the group, while each individual believes it to be aligned with the ...
.
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 (1837–1923). "The object of Rules of Order is to assist an assembly to accomplish the ...
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 House of Lords is the upper house of the Parliament of the United Kingdom. Like the lower house, the House of Commons, it meets in the Palace of Westminster in London, England. One of the oldest extant institutions in the world, its origi ...
:
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 is a group decision-making process in which participants work together to develop proposals for actions that achieve a broad acceptance. #Origin and meaning of term, Consensus is reached when everyone in the group '' ...
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False-consensus effect
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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 cohesivenes ...
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Pluralistic ignorance
In social psychology, pluralistic ignorance (also known as a collective illusion) is a phenomenon in which people mistakenly believe that others predominantly hold an opinion different from their own. In this phenomenon, most people in a group ma ...
References
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Consensus