This study focused on social projection (SP) to outgroups. Two studies were conducted to show that SP to outgroups was greater than to ingroups when an issue is more relevant to the outgroup than to the ingroup and vice versa. These experiments were conducted for students of different schools (N1 = 92, N2 = 203). The results confirmed that students overestimated agreement with working adults when the topic was more relevant to working people. Also, when the topic was relevant to students, they overestimated agreement of other students relative to the working adults. These results suggested the relevance of the opinion was more important than perceived social distance when Japanese students refer to others.
