Pluralistic ignorance

Pluralistic ignorance is a term from social psychology. He describes the situation in which a majority rejects a norm secretly, but wrongly assumes that the majority accepted this standard (eg, " everyone believes that everyone else believe in it, when in reality no one believes it ").

Characterized have used the term Daniel Katz and Floyd H. Allport, 1931.

If a group of people is in an ambiguous, unpredictable situation and nobody knows what to do, try those present from the observation of each other's notes to get on possible meaningful behavior. The group exerts on its individual members from informational social influence. But if the others are also at a loss arises pluralistic ignorance. These results - together with the diffusion of responsibility - in an emergency situation to ensure that nobody intervenes or helps, since adapts to each individual the passive behavior of the crowd. This can have fatal consequences if nobody out triggers this pluralistic ignorance and the model is able to follow the other bystander ( viewers).

The term comes from the decision model of bystander intervention of Latané & Darley, should be used with which the assistance or an omission of assistance in emergency situations declared by the amount of witnesses ( bystander effect ). Emergencies may be slightly ambiguous or difficult to interpret situations that can not be classified by the cues of the situation itself. In such ambiguous situations, people try to gain information about their environment by using the reactions of those around them as an interpretation aid.

This phenomenon was studied in the experiment to informationalen social influence of Muzaffer Serif.