Pluralistic ignorance effect in psychology

What are they thinking? 2023
Geoffrey W. Sutton & Bing AI

The pluralistic ignorance effect is a psychological phenomenon characterized by almost all people in a group privately disagree with what seems to be the view of the group. Each person, or most people, in the group holds a mistaken belief that everyone else has a different belief or opinion.

The individuals in the group are ignorant of the true beliefs or opinions of the others. They have reached a false conclusion.

In cases of injustice or wrongdoing, the consequences can be harmful if people do not challenge dangerous ideas.

Here is a quote from a paper by Dale Miller (2023).



Pluralistic ignorance is a situation where the plurality (group) is ignorant of (misperceives) itself-its beliefs, perceptions, and practices. The group experiencing pluralistic ignorance is not actually ignorant in the sense of lacking knowledge of where it stands but is rather mistaken as to where it stands (O'Gorman, 1986). A more descriptive, if less catchy, term might be collective misperception (Grant, O'Neil, and Stephens, 2009; Miller & Prentice, 1994). Despite being a common citation for pluralistic ignorance, Allport's 1924 Social Psychology did not mention the term; that awaited his 1931 book with his student, Daniel Katz (Katz and Allport, 1931). What Allport did discuss in his earlier tome was the "illusion of universality of opinions." He traced this "illusion", which he later renamed pluralistic ignorance, to two facts: 1) social life depends on individuals having knowledge of their peers' habitual feelings and practices, and 2) individuals must infer this knowledge from limited and thus potentially misleading information.

Read more in Miller's article.

Geoffrey W. Sutton, PhD is Emeritus Professor of Psychology. He retired from a clinical practice and was credentialed in clinical neuropsychology and psychopharmacology. His website is  www.suttong.com

 

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