In social psychology, pluralistic ignorance is a situation where a majority of group members privately reject a norm, but assume incorrectly that most others accept it, also described as 'no one believes, but everyone thinks that everyone believes." Lack of public opposition then helps perpetuate a norm that may be, in fact, disliked by most people.
Pluralistic ignorance can be contrasted with the false consensus effect. In pluralistic ignorance, people privately disdain but publicly support a norm (or a belief), while the false consensus effect causes people to wrongly assume that most people think like them, while in reality most people do not think like them (and express the disagreement openly). For instance, pluralistic ignorance may lead a student to drink alcohol excessively because she believes that everyone else does that, while in reality everyone else also wishes they could avoid binge drinking, but no one expresses that due to the fear of being ostracized. A false consensus for the same situation would mean that the student believes that most other people do not enjoy excessive drinking, while in fact most other people do enjoy that and openly express their opinion about it.
The term pluralistic ignorance was coined by Daniel Katz and Floyd H. Allport in 1931. Krech and Crutchfield’s described it, in (1948, pp. 388–89), as the situation where 'no one believes, but everyone thinks that everyone believes.'"
Read more about Pluralistic Ignorance: Consequences of Pluralistic Ignorance
Famous quotes containing the words pluralistic and/or ignorance:
“Of course I’m a black writer.... I’m not just a black writer, but categories like black writer, woman writer and Latin American writer aren’t marginal anymore. We have to acknowledge that the thing we call “literature” is more pluralistic now, just as society ought to be. The melting pot never worked. We ought to be able to accept on equal terms everybody from the Hassidim to Walter Lippmann, from the Rastafarians to Ralph Bunche.”
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“There is nothing can pay one for that invaluable ignorance which is the companion of youth, those sanguine groundless hopes, and that lively vanity which makes all the happiness of life.”
—Mary Wortley, Lady Montagu (1689–1762)