Pluralistic ignorance is when people mistakenly believe that others conform to certain ideas or standards, even if they privately disagree. This can lead to situations or behaviors that few people actually approve of. An example is the bystander effect, where more people observing a crime leads to a lower likelihood of intervention. Pluralistic ignorance has been studied in various contexts and can hinder action or change.
Pluralistic ignorance posits that under certain circumstances most people will mistakenly believe that others conform to, and even support, certain ideas or standards, while privately disagreeing with them. Because there is a fear of disagreeing with what is believed to be the norm, situations or behaviors that few people actually approve of continue. This is a social psychology concept that was first brought to attention in the 1930s by Floyd Allport and Daniel Katz. It can also be defined as a mistaken belief in a person’s uniqueness, which hinders action or change.
An example of pluralistic ignorance occurs in a type of social phenomenon called the bystander effect, which has been well observed in group settings. When a person is the victim of a crime, more people observing it translates into a lower likelihood that someone will intervene. Everyone shares the mistaken belief that someone else will step in and help.
Even though each person deplores crime and believes that someone should help, they strongly believe that the helper will be another individual. For this reason, in self-defense classes, people are often taught to appeal to a single individual to shake that person out of the pluralistic view. Also, if more people start helping, more of the group is likely to start helping too.
Other examples of pluralistic ignorance are not hard to find. Many Germans living during WWII privately deplored Hitler’s actions, but thought they were the only ones who did. Likewise, many white Southerners in the United States loathed slavery or the Jim Crow laws that followed. Since they believed their views were unique, they did not come forward to seek justice on behalf of African Americans. During the civil rights movement of the 1960s, however, many white Southerners participated vigorously because they realized that numerous people shared their personal aversion to discrimination.
One could say that pluralistic ignorance is an ironic desire to conform to a larger group. People act or fail to act based on a false idea of the values the group holds and a belief that any difference from the group is a minority opinion. This is ironic because the estimation of what the group believes is incorrect and most members actually share an opinion in opposition to the values the group holds.
Numerous social psychology researchers have studied pluralistic ignorance in different contexts. It has been examined in bullying behavior, attitudes toward alcohol in colleges, and in a variety of contexts where ethics and values are upheld or ignored. These studies seem to suggest that pluralistic ignorance is common, and the desire to be part of the group can lead individuals and entire groups to hold norms they actually disagree with.
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