In social psychology, pluralistic ignorance (also known as a collective illusion)[3] is a phenomenon in which people mistakenly believe that others predominantly hold an opinion different from their own.[4] In this phenomenon, most people in a group may go along with a view they do not hold because they think, incorrectly, that most other people in the group hold it. Pluralistic ignorance encompasses situations in which a minority position on a given topic is wrongly perceived to be the majority position, or the majority position is wrongly perceived to be a minority position.[5][6]
Pluralistic ignorance can arise in different ways. An individual may misjudge overall perceptions of a topic due to fear, embarrassment, social desirability, or social inhibition. Individuals may develop collective illusions when they feel they will receive backlash when they think their belief differs from society's belief.[7] From a group-level perspective, and arguably the most accurate way of analyzing pluralistic ignorance, causes of divergence between public behaviors and private opinions are caused by conservative lags (change in attitude without a change in behavior), liberal leaps (change in behavior without a change in attitude), and social identities (conforming to societal expectations of how one should behave based on the traditional ideals of the group).[8][9]
However, pluralistic ignorance describes the coincidence of a belief with inaccurate perceptions, but not the process by which those inaccurate perceptions are arrived at. Related phenomena, such as the spiral of silence and false consensus effect, demonstrate that pluralistic ignorance is not unique in its inaccurate assumption of others' opinions and these misconceptions can lead to negative consequences like groupthink and the bystander effect.[10][11]
^Katz, Daniel; Allport, Floyd Henry; Jenness, Margaret Babcock (1931). Students' attitudes; a report of the Syracuse University reaction study. Syracuse, N.Y.: Craftsman Press.