Although the existence of the false consensus effect is beyond all doubt, its interpretation as a judgemental bias is still a matter of debate. Krueger recently proposed a new measure for this phenomenon, called the truly false consensus effect (TFCE). This measure consists of correlating the subject's endorsement of each item with the error he or she made in estimating the popularity of that same item. I question the validity of this measure, arguing that it could be negative even in cases where false consensus is at work. I present an inter‐group study where participants made percentage estimates for various behaviours. The results yielded a significantly negative TFCE, although other measures of false consensus demonstrate that the phenomenon is present. I discuss the differences between Krueger's studies and my own, and suggest that a better measure of false consensus might be the particle correlation between endorsement and estimated popularity, controlling for true popularity. Copyright © 2000 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.

In studies on the Outgroup Homogeneity Effect (OHE), a common measure is percentage estimates. A possible dif®culty is that percentage estimates are also sensitive to the False Consensus Effect (FCE). I present an experiment aimed at analysing how these two phenomena interact. Engineering and business students indicated whether behaviour descriptions were true or false for themselves, then estimated the percentages of members of each group who would self-ascribe the same items. In order to bring the OHE to light while controlling for self-ascription, an item-per-item analysis is necessary. In such an analysis, the OHE must appear as over-attribution of any item by members of the group for which the item is not typical. I examined whether this effect appeared among subjects who either did or did not ascribe each item to themselves. This was done through an ANOVA where items were entered as the random factor. The False Consensus and the Outgroup Homogeneity effects both showed up in this analysis, but they interacted with each other in such a way that they could be different aspects of the same phenomenon. The consequences of this unexpected ®nding for the de®nition of the OHE are discussed.

In analyzing the role of the self-concept in judgements of similarity between persons, authors have made use of two notions: “the self as a habitual reference point” and “the self as a prototype”. We argue that these two notions must be kept distinct, and present four studies aimed at examining the hypothesis that the self could be a prototype in the strong sense of the term, namely a central exemplar in a category structured by a typicality gradient. The results from these studies show that the self is a prototype only in categories of positively valued persons. This prototype-like function does not seem to depend upon contextual priming.

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