Pluralistic ignorance
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In social psychology, pluralistic ignorance is a process which involves several members of a group who think that they have different perceptions, beliefs, or attitudes from the rest of the group. While they do not endorse the group norm, the dissenting persons behave like the other group members, because they think that the behaviour of the other group members shows that the opinion of the group is unanimous. In other words, because everyone who disagrees behaves as if he or she agrees, all dissenting members think that the norm is endorsed by every group member but themselves. This in turn reinforces their willingness to conform to the group norm rather than express their disagreement. Because of pluralistic ignorance, people may conform to the perceived consensual opinion of a group, instead of thinking and acting on their own perceptions.
Pluralistic ignorance partially explains the bystander effect: the observation that people are more likely to intervene in an emergency situation when alone than when other persons are present. If people monitor the reactions of others in such a situation, they may conclude from the lack of initiative of others that other people think that it is not necessary to intervene. If everyone behaves in this way, no one may take any action, even though some people privately think that they should do something. On the other hand, if one person intervenes, others are more likely to follow and give assistance.
Some people think that pluralistic ignorance explains the happenings in the murder case of Kitty Genovese: approximately a dozen witnesses failed to help her when she was stabbed to death. Others do not think that pluralistic ignorance was important in this case, because most of the witnesses only heard the murder (i.e. they were not eye witnesses). These people were unable to monitor the reactions of other people, which would make a pluralistic ignorance process impossible. However, it could be maintained that those who could only hear the murder were also able to monitor the reactions of others by the same means.
