pluralistic+ignorance

**Pluralistic Ignorance:** a situation in which a group of people accept something to be correct, and therefore others assume that they are correct as well.

 **Summary of research:** The term was initially coined by Daniel Katz and Floyd Allport in 1931, but Allport furthered his research on the concept through his work on impression of universality. The impression of universality suggests that people in power are able to convince others with less power that due to their inferiority they should not bother to make an attempt at impacting something, for example; voting. Pluralistic ignorance applies to this concept almost identically, it simply occurs in large groups instead of one individual. In 1996 Prentice and Miller began to continue his research through applying the term to drinking at Princeton. They knew that drinking was prominent in college life, and began to question students about it. Through their interviews they found that many of the students made the assumption that other students cared about drinking more than they did, and that they merely went along with the binge drinking to maintain a social life. Through this they learned how prevalent pluralistic ignorance really is in everyday life, and that people often accept things because they believe that a larger group has accepted it as well.


 *  Examples of Pluralistic Ignorance in pop culture/art/literature: **

[|__http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bxIrQPffSIg__]

In the film Can’t Buy Me Love, Ronnie thinks that he learns a popular new dance, and decides to show it off at the school dance. It turns out that the dance is actually an african ant eater mating ritual, and despite the fact that all of the students think the dance seems weird at first, when once a large group begins to do the dance, so does every one else. This is an example of pluralistic ignorance because it depicts a group of individuals doing something that they know in the back of their mind is not normal, but do it any ways because there is a large enough group of people partaking in it and making it seem to be “the norm”.

 Recently, Mrs. Merl was absent from school, and therefore her class was provided with a substitute teacher. As students sat in class, they gradually began to sign out to go to the bathroom, but did not return. Despite the fact that they all knew that there would probably be consequences for their actions, more students continued to “go to the bathroom” without returning, because their peers seemed to be doing it so easily. This is an example of Pluralistic ignorance, because it was a group of individuals ignoring their own knowledge due to the fact that they saw others doing something that seemed ok at the time. The students all received cuts later that week.
 *  Examples in NHS: **


 *  Related Links For further information: **

http://books.google.com/books?id=RzcC9fuAaEUC&pg=PA130&lpg=PA130&dq=pluralistic+ignorance+psychology+discovery&source=bl&ots=znQL2u05iP&sig=NJDN94VP5GZfDMEIbhVKJKhe43w&hl=en&sa=X&ei=001rT_ClIePl0QHJ6IzsBg&sqi=2&ved=0CEsQ6AEwBA#v=onepage&q=pluralistic%20ignorance%20psychology%20discovery&f=false

 http://www.shapingtomorrowsworld.org/lewandowskyPluralIgno.html