pluralistic ignorance experiment

Pluralistic Ignorance Research in Psychology: A Scoping Review of Topic and Method Variation and Directions for Future Research

Pluralistic ignorance occurs when group members mistakenly believe others’ cognitions and/or behaviors are systematically different from their own. More than 20 years have passed since the last review of pluralistic ignorance from a psychological framework, with more than 60 empirical articles assessing pluralistic ignorance published since then. Previous reviews took an almost entirely conceptual approach with minimal review of methodology, making existing reviews outdated and limited in the extent to which they can provide guidelines for researchers. The goal of this review is to evaluate and integrate the literature on pluralistic ignorance, clarify important conceptual issues, identify inconsistencies in the literature, and provide guidance for future research. We provide a comprehensive definition for the phenomenon, with a focus on its status as a group-level phenomenon. We highlight three areas of variation in particular in the current scoping review: variation in topics assessed, variation in measurement, and (especially) variation in methods for assessing the implications of individual-level misperceptions that, in aggregate, lead to pluralistic ignorance. By filling these gaps in the literature, we ultimately hope to motivate further analysis of the phenomenon.

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PLURALISTIC IGNORANCE

Related links, pluralistic ignorance quiz - test your knowledge of pluralistic ignorance, pluralistic ignorance – why you won’t raise your hand in the classroom.

Updated on 8th March, 2023

Pluralistic Ignorance Definition

Pluralistic Ignorance is a complex effect to define. Social psychology defines it as a cognitive fallacy whereby a person's psychological state is influenced by their belief that their private thoughts, attitudes, and feelings are different from everybody else's. In simple terms, Pluralistic Ignorance is when everybody thinks that their thoughts and values are different from the perceived thoughts of the majority. However, the problem is that everybody can feel the same way, leading to a public cognitive distortion, hence the term "Pluralistic." For example, have you ever been in a classroom where the teacher talks through 20 minutes of incomprehensible information and pauses for a moment to ask if anyone has any questions? You look around the class and see that absolutely no one raises their hand, leading you to believe that you are the only one in the class who does not understand anything.

What is Pluralistic Ignorance?

Pluralistic Ignorance is an example of how humans tend to behave in large groups, which is why it has been extensively studied in fields such as social psychology. As a concept, it has many overlaps with another psychological effect called the Bystander Effect, which is when people fail to intervene during times of emergency that demand action from others. To briefly define it, the Bystander Effect is the inhibiting influence of large groups of people on a person's willingness to help others in need. Pluralistic Ignorance comes into play in this context when individuals from a group understand that their lack of action is detrimental to the situation. Still, because no one around them is acting either, they come to the false conclusion that the situation is not an emergency that requires their own personal intervention.

History of Pluralistic Ignorance

The term Pluralistic Ignorance was first coined by social psychologists Floyd Allport (1890-1979) and Daniel Katz (1903-1998) in 1931. The phenomenon emerged during Allport's primary investigations into "the illusion of universality of opinions" (a mouthful, right?). Similar to Pluralistic Ignorance, the illusion of universality of opinions refers to the tendency of others to falsely believe that everybody in a given social group has the same personal opinions as themselves. During their famous experiment in 1931, Allport and Katz observed instances of Pluralistic Ignorance when they assessed their students' reactions to being asked to share their dormitories and fraternities with minority students. What they found was that students would rarely object to this in a public group but would state worrying concerns in private settings. In this experiment, Allport and Katz found that social groups can influence public behavior despite group members having significantly incongruent attitudes about a topic. After this discovery, multiple psychologists attempted to see if they could replicate these effects as it would have profound ramifications on understanding human social behavior. For example, one study conducted by Richard Shanck (1902-1963) investigated the private and public attitudes of an isolated village with a strong religious presence. Similar to Allport and Katz, Shanck found out that there was a distinct difference between the villagers' private and public attitudes, thus displaying high Pluralistic Ignorance.

Case Examples of Pluralistic Ignorance

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Bystander Effect In Psychology

Udochi Emeghara

Research Assistant at Harvard University

B.A., Neuroscience, Harvard University

Udochi Emeghara is a research assistant at the Harvard University Stress and Development Lab.

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Take-home Messages

• The bystander effect is a social psychological phenomenon where individuals are less likely to help a victim when others are present. The greater the number of bystanders, the less likely any one of them is to help.
• Factors include diffusion of responsibility and the need to behave in correct and socially acceptable ways.
• The most frequently cited real-life example of the bystander effect regards a young woman called Kitty Genovese , who was murdered in Queens, New York, in 1964 while several of her neighbors looked on. No one intervened until it was too late.
• Notice the event (or in a hurry and not notice).
• Interpret the situation as an emergency (or assume that as others are not acting, it is not an emergency).
• Assume responsibility (or assume that others will do this).
• Know what to do (or not have the skills necessary to help).
• Decide to help (or worry about danger, legislation, embarrassment, etc.).
• Latané and Darley (1970) identified three different psychological processes that might prevent a bystander from helping a person in distress: (i) diffusion of responsibility; (ii) evaluation apprehension (fear of being publically judged); and (iii) pluralistic ignorance (the tendency to rely on the overt reactions of others when defining an ambiguous situation).
• Diffusion of responsibility refers to the tendency to subjectively divide personal responsibility to help by the number of bystanders present. Bystanders are less likely to intervene in emergency situations as the size of the group increases, and they feel less personal responsibility.

What is the bystander effect?

The term bystander effect refers to the tendency for people to be inactive in high-danger situations due to the presence of other bystanders (Darley & Latané, 1968; Latané & Darley, 1968, 1970; Latané & Nida, 1981).

Thus, people tend to help more when alone than in a group.

The implications of this theory have been widely studied by a variety of researchers, but initial interest in this phenomenon arose after the brutal murder of Catherine “Kitty” Genovese in 1964.

Through a series of experiments beginning in the 1960s and 1970s, the bystander effect phenomenon has become more widely understood.

Kitty Genovese

On the morning of March 13, 1964, Kitty Genovese returned to her apartment complex, at 3 am, after finishing her shift at a local bar.

After parking her car in a lot adjacent to her apartment building, she began walking a short distance to the entrance, which was located at the back of the building.

As she walked, she noticed a figure at the far end of the lot. She shifted directions and headed towards a different street, but the man followed and seized her.

As she yelled, neighbors from the apartment building went to the window and watched as he stabbed her. A man from the apartment building yelled down, “Let that girl alone!” (New York Times, 1964).

Following this, the assailant appeared to have left, but once the lights from the apartments turned off, the perpetrator returned and stabbed Kitty Genovese again. Once again, the lights came on, and the windows opened, driving the assaulter away from the scene.

Unfortunately, the assailant returned and stabbed Catherine Genovese for the final time. The first call to the police came in at 3:50 am, and the police arrived in two minutes.

When the neighbors were asked why they did not intervene or call the police earlier, some answers were “I didn”t want to get involved”; “Frankly, we were afraid”; “I was tired. I went back to bed.” (New York Times, 1964).

After this initial report, the case was launched to nationwide attention, with various leaders commenting on the apparent “moral decay” of the country.

In response to these claims, Darley and Latané set out to find an alternative explanation.

Decision Model of Helping

Latané & Darley (1970) formulated a five-stage model to explain why bystanders in emergencies sometimes do and sometimes do not offer help.

At each stage in the model, the answer ‘No’ results in no help being given, while the answer ‘yes’ leads the individual closer to offering help.

However, they argued that helping responses may be inhibited at any stage of the process. For example, the bystander may not notice the situation or the situation may be ambiguous and not readily interpretable as an emergency.

The five stages are:

• The bystander must notice that something is amiss.
• The bystander must define that situation as an emergency.
• The bystander must assess how personally responsible they feel.
• The bystander must decide how best to offer assistance.
• The bystander must act on that decision.

Figure 1. Decision Model of Helping by Latané and Darley (1970).

Why does the bystander effect occur?

Latane´ and Darley (1970) identified three different psychological processes that might interfere with the completion of this sequence.

Diffusion of Responsibility

The first process is a diffusion of responsibility, which refers to the tendency to subjectively divide the personal responsibility to help by the number of bystanders.

Diffusion of responsibility occurs when a duty or task is shared between a group of people instead of only one person.

Whenever there is an emergency situation in which more than one person is present, there is a diffusion of responsibility. There are three ideas that categorize this phenomenon:

• The moral obligation to help does not fall only on one person but the whole group that is witnessing the emergency.
• The blame for not helping can be shared instead of resting on only one person.
• The belief that another bystander in the group will offer help.

Darley and Latané (1968) tested this hypothesis by engineering an emergency situation and measuring how long it took for participants to get help.

College students were ushered into a solitary room under the impression that a conversation centered around learning in a “high-stress, high urban environment” would ensue.

This discussion occurred with “other participants” that were in their own room as well (the other participants were just records playing). Each participant would speak one at a time into a microphone.

After a round of discussion, one of the participants would have a “seizure” in the middle of the discussion; the amount of time that it took the college student to obtain help from the research assistant that was outside of the room was measured. If the student did not get help after six minutes, the experiment was cut off.

Darley and Latané (1968) believed that the more “people” there were in the discussion, the longer it would take subjects to get help.

The results were in line with that hypothesis. The smaller the group, the more likely the “victim” was to receive timely help.

Still, those who did not get help showed signs of nervousness and concern for the victim. The researchers believed that the signs of nervousness highlight that the college student participants were most likely still deciding the best course of action; this contrasts with the leaders of the time who believed inaction was due to indifference.

This experiment showcased the effect of diffusion of responsibility on the bystander effect.

Evaluation Apprehension

The second process is evaluation apprehension, which refers to the fear of being judged by others when acting publicly.

People may also experience evaluation apprehension and fear of losing face in front of other bystanders.

Individuals may feel afraid of being superseded by a superior helper, offering unwanted assistance, or facing the legal consequences of offering inferior and possibly dangerous assistance.

Individuals may decide not to intervene in critical situations if they are afraid of being superseded by a superior helper, offering unwanted assistance, or facing the legal consequences of offering inferior and possibly dangerous assistance.

Pluralistic Ignorance

The third process is pluralistic ignorance, which results from the tendency to rely on the overt reactions of others when defining an ambiguous situation.

Pluralistic ignorance occurs when a person disagrees with a certain type of thinking but believes that everyone else adheres to it and, as a result, follows that line of thinking even though no one believes it.

Deborah A. Prentice cites an example of this. Despite being in a difficult class, students may not raise their hands in response to the lecturer asking for questions.

This is often due to the belief that everyone else understands the material, so for fear of looking inadequate, no one asks clarifying questions.

It is this type of thinking that explains the effect of pluralistic ignorance on the bystander effect. The overarching idea is uncertainty and perception. What separates pluralistic ignorance is the ambiguousness that can define a situation.

If the situation is clear (for the classroom example: someone stating they do not understand), pluralistic ignorance would not apply (since the person knows that someone else agrees with their thinking).

It is the ambiguity and uncertainty which leads to incorrect perceptions that categorize pluralistic ignorance.

Rendsvig (2014) proposes an eleven-step process to explain this phenomenon.

These steps follow the perspective of a bystander (who will be called Bystander A) amidst a group of other bystanders in an emergency situation.

• Bystander A is present in a specific place. Nothing has happened.
• A situation occurs that is ambiguous in nature (it is not certain what has occurred or what the ramifications of the event are), and Bystander A notices it.
• Bystander A believes that this is an emergency situation but is unaware of how the rest of the bystanders perceive the situation.
• A course of action is taken. This could be a few things like charging into the situation or calling the police, but in pluralistic ignorance, Bystander A chooses to understand more about the situation by looking around and taking in the reactions of others.
• As observation takes place, Bystander A is not aware that the other bystanders may be doing the same thing. Thus, when surveying others’ reactions, Bystander A “misperceives” the other bystanders” observation of the situation as purposeful inaction.
• As Bystander A notes the reaction of the others, Bystander A puts the reaction of the other bystanders in context.
• Bystander A then believes that the inaction of others is due to their belief that an emergency situation is not occurring.
• Thus, Bystander A believes that there is an accident but also believes that others do not perceive the situation as an emergency. Bystander A then changes their initial belief.
• Bystander A now believes that there is no emergency.
• Bystander A has another opportunity to help.
• Bystander A chooses not to help because of the belief that there is no emergency.

Pluralistic ignorance operates under the assumption that all the other bystanders are also going through these eleven steps.

Thus, they all choose not to help due to the misperception of others’ reactions to the same situation.

Other Explanations

While these three are the most widely known explanations, there are other theories that could also play a role. One example is a confusion of responsibility.

Confusion of responsibility occurs when a bystander fears that helping could lead others to believe that they are the perpetrator. This fear can cause people to not act in dire situations.

Another example is priming. Priming occurs when a person is given cues that will influence future actions. For example, if a person is given a list of words that are associated with home decor and furniture and then is asked to give a five-letter word, answers like chair or table would be more likely than pasta.

In social situations, Garcia et al. found that simply thinking of being in a group could lead to lower rates of helping in emergency situations. This occurs because groups are often associated with “being lost in a crowd, being deindividuated, and having a lowered sense of personal accountability” (Garcia et al., 2002, p. 845).

Thus, the authors argue that the way a person was primed could also influence their ability to help. These alternate theories highlight the fact that the bystander effect is a complex phenomenon that encompasses a variety of ideologies.

Bystander Experiments

In one of the first experiments of this type, Latané & Darley (1968) asked participants to sit on their own in a room and complete a questionnaire on the pressures of urban life.

Smoke (actually steam) began pouring into the room through a small wall vent. Within two minutes, 50 percent had taken action, and 75 percent had acted within six minutes when the experiment ended.

In groups of three participants, 62 percent carried on working for the entire duration of the experiment.

In interviews afterward, participants reported feeling hesitant about showing anxiety, so they looked to others for signs of anxiety. But since everyone was trying to appear calm, these signs were not evident, and therefore they believed that they must have misinterpreted the situation and redefined it as ‘safe.’

This is a clear example of pluralistic ignorance, which can affect the answer at step 2 of the Latané and Darley decision model above.

Genuine ambiguity can also affect the decision-making process. Shotland and Straw (1976) conducted an interesting experiment that illustrated this.

They hypothesized that people would be less willing to intervene in a situation of domestic violence (where a relationship exists between the two people) than in a situation involving violence involving two strangers. Male participants were shown a staged fight between a man and a woman.

In one condition, the woman screamed, ‘I don’t even know you,’ while in another, she screamed, ‘I don’t even know why I married you.’

Three times as many men intervened in the first condition as in the second condition. Such findings again provide support for the decision model in terms of the decisions made at step 3 in the process.

People are less likely to intervene if they believe that the incident does not require their personal responsibility.

Critical Evaluation

While the bystander effect has become a cemented theory in social psychology, the original account of the murder of Catherine Genovese has been called into question. By casting doubt on the original case, the implications of the Darley and Latané research are also questioned.

Manning et al. (2007) did this through their article “The Kitty Genovese murder and the social psychology of helping, The parable of the 38 witnesses”. By examining the court documents and legal proceedings from the case, the authors found three points that deviate from the traditional story told.

While it was originally claimed that thirty-eight people witnessed this crime, in actuality, only a few people physically saw Kitty Genovese and her attacker; the others just heard the screams from Kitty Genovese.

In addition, of those who could see, none actually witnessed the stabbing take place (although one of the people who testified did see a violent action on behalf of the attacker.)

This contrasts with the widely held notion that all 38 people witnessed the initial stabbing.

Lastly, the second stabbing that resulted in the death of Catherine Genovese occurred in a stairwell which was not in the view of most of the initial witnesses; this deviates from the original article that stated that the murder took place on Austin Street in New York City in full view of at least 38 people.

This means that they would not have been able to physically see the murder take place. The potential inaccurate reporting of the initial case has not negated the bystander effect completely, but it has called into question its applicability and the incomplete nature of research concerning it.

Limitations of the Decision-Helping Model

Schroeder et al. (1995) believe that the decision-helping model provides a valuable framework for understanding bystander intervention.

Although primarily developed to explain emergency situations, it has been applied to other situations, such as preventing someone from drinking and driving, to deciding to donate a kidney to a relative.

However, the decision model does not provide a complete picture. It fails to explain why ‘no’ decisions are made at each stage of the decision tree. This is particularly true after people have originally interpreted the event as an emergency.

The decision model doesn’t take into account emotional factors such as anxiety or fear, nor does it focus on why people do help; it mainly concentrates on why people don’t help.

Piliavin et al. (1969, 1981) put forward the cost–reward arousal model as a major alternative to the decision model and involves evaluating the consequences of helping or not helping.

Whether one helps or not depends on the outcome of weighing up both the costs and rewards of helping. The costs of helping include effort, time, loss of resources, risk of harm, and negative emotional response.

The rewards of helping include fame, gratitude from the victim and relatives, and self-satisfaction derived from the act of helping. It is recognized that costs may be different for different people and may even differ from one occasion to another for the same person.

Accountability Cues

According to Bommel et al. (2012), the negative account of the consequences of the bystander effect undermines the potential positives. The article “Be aware to care: Public self-awareness leads to a reversal of the bystander effect” details how crowds can actually increase the amount of aid given to a victim under certain circumstances.

One of the problems with bystanders in emergency situations is the ability to split the responsibility (diffusion of responsibility).

Yet, when there are “accountability cues,” people tend to help more. Accountability cues are specific markers that let the bystander know that their actions are being watched or highlighted, like a camera. In a series of experiments, the researchers tested if the bystander effect could be reversed using these cues.

An online forum that was centered around aiding those with “severe emotional distress” (Bommel et al., 2012) was created.

The participants in the study responded to specific messages from visitors of the forum and then rated how visible they felt on the forum.

The researchers postulated that when there were no accountability cues, people would not give as much help and would not rate themselves as being very visible on the forum; when there are accountability cues (using a webcam and highlighting the name of the forum visitor), not only would more people help but they would also rate themselves as having a higher presence on the forum.

As expected, the results fell in line with these theories. Thus, targeting one’s reputation through accountability cues could increase the likelihood of helping. This shows that there are potential positives to the bystander effect.

Neuroimaging Evidence

Researchers looked at the regions of the brain that were active when a participant witnessed emergencies. They noticed that less activity occurred in the regions that facilitate helping: the pre- and postcentral gyrus and the medial prefrontal cortex (Hortensius et al., 2018).

Thus, one’s initial biological response to an emergency situation is inaction due to personal fear. After that initial fear, sympathy arises, which prompts someone to go to the aid of the victim. These two systems work in opposition; whichever overrides the other determines the action that will be taken.

If there is more sympathy than personal distress, the participant will help. Thus, these researchers argue that the decision to help is not “reflective” but “reflexive” (Hortensius et al., 2018).

With this in mind, the researchers argue for a more personalized view that takes into account one’s personality and disposition to be more sympathetic rather than utilize a one-size-fits-all overgeneralization.

Darley, J. M., & Latané´, B. (1968). Bystander intervention in emergencies: Diffusion of responsibility . Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 8 , 377–383.

Garcia, Stephen M, Weaver, Kim, Moskowitz, Gordon B, & Darley, John M. (2002). Crowded Minds. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 83 (4), 843-853.

Hortensius, Ruud, & De Gelder, Beatrice. (2018). From Empathy to Apathy: The Bystander Effect Revisited. Current Directions in Psychological Science, 27 (4), 249-256.

Latané´, B., & Darley, J. M. (1968). Group inhibition of bystander intervention in emergencies . Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 10 , 215–221.

Latané´, B., & Darley, J. M. (1970). The unresponsive bystander: Why doesn’t he help? New York, NY: Appleton-Century-Croft.

Latané´, B., & Darley, J. M. (1976). Help in a crisis: Bystander response to an emergency . Morristown, NJ: General Learning Press.

Latané´, B., & Nida, S. (1981). Ten years of research on group size and helping . Psychological Bulletin, 89 , 308 –324.

Manning, R., Levine, M., & Collins, A. (2007). The Kitty Genovese murder and the social psychology of helping: The parable of the 38 witnesses. American Psychologist, 62 , 555-562.

Prentice, D. (2007). Pluralistic ignorance. In R. F. Baumeister & K. D. Vohs (Eds.), Encyclopedia of social psychology (Vol. 1, pp. 674-674) . Thousand Oaks, CA: SAGE Publications, Inc.

Rendsvig, R. K. (2014). Pluralistic ignorance in the bystander effect: Informational dynamics of unresponsive witnesses in situations calling for intervention. Synthese (Dordrecht), 191 (11), 2471-2498.

Shotland, R. L., & Straw, M. K. (1976). Bystander response to an assault: When a man attacks a woman. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 34 (5), 990.

Siegal, H. A. (1972). The Unresponsive Bystander: Why Doesn’t He Help? 1(3) , 226-227.

Van Bommel, Marco, Van Prooijen, Jan-Willem, Elffers, Henk, & Van Lange, Paul A.M. (2012). Be aware to care: Public self-awareness leads to a reversal of the bystander effect. Journal of Experimental Social Psychology, 48 (4), 926-930.

Further information

Latané, B., & Nida, S. (1981). Ten years of research on group size and helping. Psychological Bulletin , 89, 308 –324.

BBC Radio 4 Case Study: Kitty Genovese

Piliavin Subway Study

Greater Good Science Center • Magazine • In Action • In Education

We Are All Bystanders

For more than 40 years, Peggy Kirihara has felt guilty about Stewart.

Peggy liked Stewart. They went to high school together. Their fathers were friends, both farmers in California’s Central Valley, and Peggy would always say “hi” when she passed Stewart in the hall.

Yet every day when Stewart boarded their school bus, a couple of boys would tease him mercilessly. And every day, Peggy would just sit in her seat, silent.

“I was dying inside for him,” she said. “There were enough of us on the bus who were feeling awful—we could have done something. But none of us said anything.”

Peggy still can’t explain why she didn’t stick up for Stewart. She had known his tormenters since they were all little kids, and she didn’t find them threatening. She thinks if she had spoken up on his behalf, other kids might have chimed in to make the teasing stop.

But perhaps most surprising—and distressing—to Peggy is that she considers herself an assertive and moral person, yet those convictions aren’t backed up by her conduct on the bus.

“I think I would say something now, but I don’t know for sure,” she said. “Maybe if I saw someone being beaten up and killed, I’d just stand there. That still worries me.”

Many of us share Peggy’s concern. We’ve all found ourselves in similar situations: the times we’ve seen someone harassed on the street and didn’t intervene; when we’ve driven past a car stranded by the side of the road, assuming another driver would pull over to help; even when we’ve noticed litter on the sidewalk and left it for someone else to pick up. We witness a problem, consider some kind of positive action, then respond by doing… nothing. Something holds us back. We remain bystanders.

Why don’t we help in these situations? Why do we sometimes put our moral instincts in shackles? These are questions that haunt all of us, and they apply well beyond the fleeting scenarios described above. Every day we serve as bystanders to the world around us—not just to people in need on the street but to larger social, political, and environmental problems that concern us, but which we feel powerless to address on our own. Indeed, the bystander phenomenon pervades the history of the past century.

“The bystander is a modern archetype, from the Holocaust to the genocide in Rwanda to the current environmental crisis,” says Charles Garfield , a clinical professor of psychology at the University of California, San Francisco, School of Medicine who is writing a book about the psychological differences between bystanders and people who display “moral courage.”

“Why,” asked Garfield, “do some people respond to these crises while others don’t?”

In the shadow of these crises, researchers have spent the past few decades trying to answer Garfield’s question. Their findings reveal a valuable story about human nature: Often, only subtle differences separate the bystanders from the morally courageous people of the world. Most of us, it seems, have the potential to fall into either category. It is the slight, seemingly insignificant details in a situation that can push us one way or the other.

Researchers have identified some of the invisible forces that restrain us from acting on our own moral instincts while also suggesting how we might fight back against these unseen inhibitors of altruism. Taken together, these results offer a scientific understanding for what spurs us to everyday altruism and lifetimes of activism, and what induces us to remain bystanders.

Altruistic inertia

Among the most infamous bystanders are 38 people in Queens, New York, who in 1964 witnessed the murder of one of their neighbors, a young woman named Kitty Genovese ( see sidebar ).

A serial killer attacked and stabbed Genovese late one night outside her apartment house, and these 38 neighbors later admitted to hearing her screams; at least three said they saw part of the attack take place. Yet no one intervened.

While the Genovese murder shocked the American public, it also moved several social psychologists to try to understand the behavior of people like Genovese’s neighbors.

One of those psychologists was John Darley , who was living in New York at the time. Ten days after the Genovese murder, Darley had lunch with another psychologist, Bibb Latané , and they discussed the incident.

“The newspaper explanations were focusing on the appalling personalities of those who saw the murder but didn’t intervene, saying they had been dehumanized by living in an urban environment,” said Darley, now a professor at Princeton University . “We wanted to see if we could explain the incident by drawing on the social psychological principles that we knew.”

A main goal of their research was to determine whether the presence of other people inhibits someone from intervening in an emergency, as had seemed to be the case in the Genovese murder. In one of their studies, college students sat in a cubicle and were instructed to talk with fellow students through an intercom. They were told that they would be speaking with one, two, or five other students, and only one person could use the intercom at a time.

There was actually only one other person in the study—a confederate (someone working with the researchers). Early in the study, the confederate mentioned that he sometimes suffered from seizures. The next time he spoke, he became increasingly loud and incoherent; he pretended to choke and gasp. Before falling silent, he stammered:

If someone could help me out it would it would er er s-s-sure be sure be good… because er there er er a cause I er I uh I’ve got a a one of the er sei-er-er things coming on and and and I could really er use some help… I’m gonna die er er I’m gonna die er help er er seizure er…

Eighty-five percent of the participants who were in the two-person situation, and hence believed they were the only witness to the victim’s seizure, left their cubicles to help. In contrast, only 62 percent of the participants who were in the three-person situation and 31 percent of the participants in the six-person situation tried to help.

Darley and Latané attributed their results to a “diffusion of responsibility”: When study participants thought there were other witnesses to the emergency, they felt less personal responsibility to intervene. Similarly, the witnesses of the Kitty Genovese murder may have seen other apartment lights go on, or seen each other in the windows, and assumed someone else would help. The end result is altruistic inertia. Other researchers have also suggested the effects of a “confusion of responsibility,” where bystanders fail to help someone in distress because they don’t want to be mistaken for the cause of that distress.

Darley and Latané also suspected that bystanders don’t intervene in an emergency because they’re misled by the reactions of the people around them. To test this hypothesis, they ran an experiment in which they asked participants to fill out questionnaires in a laboratory room. After the participants had gotten to work, smoke filtered into the room—a clear signal of danger.

When participants were alone, 75 percent of them left the room and reported the smoke to the experimenter. With three participants in the room, only 38 percent left to report the smoke. And quite remarkably, when a participant was joined by two confederates instructed not to show any concern, only 10 percent of the participants reported the smoke to the experimenter.

The passive bystanders in this study succumbed to what’s known as “pluralistic ignorance”—the tendency to mistake one another’s calm demeanor as a sign that no emergency is actually taking place. There are strong social norms that reinforce pluralistic ignorance. It is somewhat embarrassing, after all, to be the one who loses his cool when no danger actually exists. Such an effect was likely acting on the people who witnessed the Kitty Genovese incident; indeed, many said they didn’t realize what was going on beneath their windows and assumed it was a lover’s quarrel. That interpretation was reinforced by the fact that no one else was responding, either.

A few years later, Darley ran a study with psychologist Daniel Batson that had seminary students at Princeton walk across campus to give a talk. Along the way, the students passed a study confederate, slumped over and groaning in a passageway. Their response depended largely on a single variable: whether or not they were late. Only 10 percent of the students stopped to help when they were in a hurry; more than six times as many helped when they had plenty of time before their talk.

Lateness, the presence of other people—these are some of the factors that can turn us all into bystanders in an emergency. Yet another important factor is the characteristics of the victim. Research has shown that people are more likely to help those they perceive to be similar to them, including others from their own racial or ethnic groups. In general, women tend to receive more help than men. But this varies according to appearance: More attractive and femininely dressed women tend to receive more help from passersby, perhaps because they fit the gender stereotype of the vulnerable female.

We don’t like to discover that our propensity for altruism can depend on prejudice or the details of a particular situation—details that seem beyond our control. But these scientific findings force us to consider how we’d perform under pressure; they reveal that Kitty Genovese’s neighbors might have been just like us. Even more frightening, it becomes easier to understand how good people in Rwanda or Nazi Germany remained silent against the horrors around them. Afraid, confused, coerced, or willfully unaware, they could convince themselves that it wasn’t their responsibility to intervene.

But still, some did assume this responsibility, and this is the other half of the bystander story. Some researchers refer to the “active bystander,” that person who witnesses an emergency, recognizes it as such, and takes it upon herself to do something about it.

Who are these people? Are they inspired to action because they receive strong cues within a situation, indicating it’s an emergency? Or is there a particular set of characteristics—a personality type—that makes some people more likely to be active bystanders while others remain passive?

Why people help

A leader in the study of the differences between active and passive bystanders is psychologist Ervin Staub , whose research interests were shaped by his experiences as a young Jewish child in Hungary during World War II.

“I was to be killed in the Holocaust,” he said. “And there were important bystanders in my life who showed me that people don’t have to be passive in the face of evil.” One of these people was his family’s maid, Maria, a Christian woman who risked her life to shelter Staub and his sister while 75 percent of Hungary’s 600,000 Jews were killed by the Nazis.

Staub has tried to understand what motivates the Marias of the world. Some of his research has put a spin on the experimental studies pioneered by Darley and Latané, exploring what makes people more likely to intervene rather than serve as passive bystanders.

In one experiment, a study participant and a confederate were placed in a room together, instructed to work on a joint task. Soon afterwards, they heard a crash and cries of distress. When the confederate dismissed the sounds—saying something like, “That sounds like a tape. .. Or I guess it could be part of another experiment.”—only 25 percent of the participants went into the next room to try to help. But when the confederate said, “That sounds bad. Maybe we should do something,” 66 percent of the participants took action. And when the confederate added that participants should go into the next room to check out the sounds, every single one of them tried to help.

In another study, Staub found that kindergarten and first grade children were actually more likely to respond to sounds of distress from an adjoining room when they were placed in pairs rather than alone. That seemed to be the case because, unlike the adults in Darley and Latané’s studies, the young children talked openly about their fears and concerns, and together tried to help.

These findings suggest the positive influence we can exert as bystanders. Just as passive bystanders reinforce a sense that nothing is wrong in a situation, the active bystander can, in fact, get people to focus on a problem and motivate them to take action.

John Darley has also identified actions a victim can take to get others to help him. One is to make his need clear—“I’ve twisted my ankle and I can’t walk; I need help”—and the other is to select a specific person for help—“You there, can you help me?” By doing this, the victim overcomes the two biggest obstacles to intervention. He prevents people from concluding there is no real emergency (thereby eliminating the effect of pluralistic ignorance), and prevents them from thinking that someone else will help (thereby overcoming diffusion of responsibility).

But Staub has tried to take this research one step further. He has developed a questionnaire meant to identify people with a predisposition toward becoming active bystanders. People who score well on this survey express a heightened concern for the welfare of others, greater feelings of social responsibility, and a commitment to moral values—and they also prove more likely to help others when an opportunity arises.

Similar research has been conducted by sociologist Samuel Oliner . Like Staub, Oliner is a Holocaust survivor whose work has been inspired by the people who helped him escape the Nazis. With his wife Pearl , a professor of education, he conducted an extensive study into “the altruistic personality,” interviewing more than 400 people who rescued Jews during the Holocaust, as well as more than 100 nonrescuers and Holocaust survivors alike. In their book The Altruistic Personality , the Oliners explain that rescuers shared some deep personality traits, which they described as their “capacity for extensive relationships—their stronger sense of attachment to others and their feelings of responsibility for the welfare of others.” They also found that these tendencies had been instilled in many rescuers from the time they were young children, often stemming from parents who displayed more tolerance, care, and empathy toward their children and toward people different from themselves.

“I would claim there is a predisposition in some people to help whenever the opportunity arises,” said Oliner, who contrasts this group to bystanders. “A bystander is less concerned with the outside world, beyond his own immediate community. A bystander might be less tolerant of differences, thinking ‘Why should I get involved? These are not my people. Maybe they deserve it?’ They don’t see helping as a choice. But rescuers see tragedy and feel no choice but to get involved. How could they stand by and let another person perish?”

Kristen Monroe , a political scientist at the University of California, Irvine , has reached a similar conclusion from her own set of interviews with various kinds of altruists. In her book The Heart of Altruism , she writes of the “altruistic perspective,” a common perception among altruists “that they are strongly linked to others through a shared humanity.”

But Monroe cautions that differences are often not so clear cut between bystanders, perpetrators, and altruists.

“We know that perpetrators can be rescuers and some rescuers I’ve interviewed have killed people,” she said. “It’s hard to see someone as one or the other because they cross categories. Academics like to think in categories. But the truth is that it’s not so easy.”

Indeed, much of the bystander research suggests that one’s personality only determines so much. To offer the right kind of help, one also needs the relevant skills or knowledge demanded by a particular situation.

As an example, John Darley referred to his study in which smoke was pumped into a room to see whether people would react to that sign of danger. One of the participants in this study had been in the Navy, where his ship had once caught on fire. So when this man saw the smoke, said Darley, “He got the hell out and did something, because of his past experiences.” There’s an encouraging implication of these findings: If given the proper tools and primed to respond positively in a crisis, most of us have the ability to transcend our identities as bystanders.

“I think that altruism, caring, social responsibility is not only doable, it’s teachable,” said Oliner.

And in recent years, there have been many efforts to translate research like Oliner’s into programs that encourage more people to avoid the traps of becoming a bystander.

Anti-bystander education

Ervin Staub has been at the fore of this anti-bystander education. In the 1990s, in the wake of the Rodney King beating, he worked with California’s Department of Justice to develop a training program for police officers. The goal of the program was to teach officers how they could intervene when they feared a fellow officer was about to use too much force.

“The police have a conception, as part of their culture, that the way you police a fellow officer is to support whatever they’re doing, and that can lead to tragedy, both for the citizens and the police themselves,” said Staub. “So here the notion was to make police officers positive active bystanders, getting them engaged early enough so that they didn’t have to confront their fellow officer.”

More recently, Staub helped schools in Massachusetts develop an anti-bystander curriculum, intended to encourage children to intervene against bullying. The program draws on earlier research that identified the causes of bystander behavior. For instance, older students are reluctant to discuss their fears about bullying, so each student tacitly accepts it, afraid to make waves, and no one identifies the problem—a form of pluralistic ignorance. Staub wants to change the culture of the classroom by giving these students opportunities to air their fears.

“If you can get people to express their concern, then already a whole different situation exists,” he said.

This echoes a point that John Darley makes: More people need to learn about the subtle pressures that can cause bystander behavior, such as diffusion of responsibility and pluralistic ignorance. That way they’ll be better prepared next time they encounter a crisis situation. “We want to explode one particular view that people have: ‘Were I in that situation, I would behave in an altruistic, wonderful way,’” he said. “What I say is, ‘No, you’re misreading what’s happening. I want to teach you about the pressures [that can cause bystander behavior]. Then when you feel those pressures, I want that to be a cue that you might be getting things wrong.’”

Research suggests that this kind of education is possible. One set of studies even found that people who attended social psychology lectures about the causes of bystander behavior were less susceptible to those influences.

But of course, not even this form of education is a guarantee against becoming a bystander. We’re always subject to the complicated interaction between our personal disposition and the demands of circumstance. And we may never know how we’ll act until we find ourselves in a crisis.

To illustrate this point, Samuel Oliner told the story of a Polish brickmaker who was interviewed for Oliner’s book, The Altruistic Personality . During World War II, a Jewish man who had escaped from a concentration camp came to the brickmaker and pleaded for help. The brickmaker turned him away, saying he didn’t want to put his own family at risk. “So is he evil?” asked Oliner. “I wouldn’t say he’s evil. He couldn’t act quickly enough, I suppose, to say, ‘Hide in my kiln,’ or ‘Hide in my barn.’ He didn’t think that way.”

“If I was the bricklayer and you came to me, and the Nazis were behind you and the Gestapo was chasing you—would I be willing to help? Would I be willing to risk my family? I don’t know. I don’t know if I would be.”

About the Authors

Jason Marsh

Jason Marsh is the executive director of the Greater Good Science Center and the editor in chief of Greater Good .

Dacher Keltner

Uc berkeley.

Dacher Keltner, Ph.D. , is the founding director of the Greater Good Science Center and a professor of psychology at the University of California, Berkeley. He is the author of The Power Paradox: How We Gain and Lose Influence and Born to Be Good , and a co-editor of The Compassionate Instinct .

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this is a great point; everyone should be more aware of this, we should be more alert if something isn’t right and help others if they’re hurt or being bullied

if we don’t, we’ll continue to be called bystanders and may not be given help when we are in a bad situation.

Yancey | 1:26 pm, August 23, 2012 | Link

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• Published: 23 August 2022

Americans experience a false social reality by underestimating popular climate policy support by nearly half

• Gregg Sparkman 1 ,
• Nathan Geiger 2 &
• Elke U. Weber   ORCID: orcid.org/0000-0002-1678-3631 3  

Nature Communications volume  13 , Article number:  4779 ( 2022 ) Cite this article

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• Climate-change mitigation
• Climate-change policy
• Energy policy
• Human behaviour
• Psychology and behaviour

Pluralistic ignorance—a shared misperception of how others think or behave—poses a challenge to collective action on problems like climate change. Using a representative sample of Americans ( N  = 6119), we examine whether Americans accurately perceive national concern about climate change and support for mitigating policies. We find a form of pluralistic ignorance that we describe as a false social reality : a near universal perception of public opinion that is the opposite of true public sentiment. Specifically, 80–90% of Americans underestimate the prevalence of support for major climate change mitigation policies and climate concern. While 66–80% Americans support these policies, Americans estimate the prevalence to only be between 37–43% on average. Thus, supporters of climate policies outnumber opponents two to one, while Americans falsely perceive nearly the opposite to be true. Further, Americans in every state and every assessed demographic underestimate support across all polices tested. Preliminary evidence suggests three sources of these misperceptions: (i) consistent with a false consensus effect, respondents who support these policies less (conservatives) underestimate support by a greater degree; controlling for one’s own personal politics, (ii) exposure to more conservative local norms and (iii) consuming conservative news correspond to greater misperceptions.

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Introduction.

Addressing a collective action problem like climate change requires individuals to recognize the problem as a threat and to engage in coordinated actions that result in major structural and social change. Collective action problems pose a difficult challenge as individuals are less likely to act when there are others who standby and do nothing—and this outcome is only more common when the problem at hand is not clearly perceived to be a threat 1 . Further, research on threat perception suggests we rely heavily on others’ reactions to recognize complex or non-immediate problems like climate change as a threat 2 , 3 . Similarly, perceptions of social norms, including perceiving others’ concern and desire for action, may be key to coordinating collective solutions 4 , 5 , including in environmental domains 6 , 7 . But such processes are hampered if people fail to accurately perceive that others are concerned and support taking action. Systematic misperception of public opinion (i.e., “pluralistic ignorance” 8 ) like a widespread underestimation of public support for climate action could inhibit willingness to talk about the problem with others 8 , 9 , and could lead people to falsely conclude that the vocal minority who dismiss climate change are representative of broader public opinion 10 . Further, given that most Americans report concern about climate change and support many policies to address the issue 11 , 12 , why has the US not yet enacted major climate policy to address the issue? If most Americans were unaware of the popularity of their pro-climate action views, this could encourage inaction through pressures to conform to the (mis)perceived political attitudes of others, a phenomenon robust across the political spectrum 13 . These concerning possibilities raise the question: Do Americans accurately perceive public support for climate mitigation?

Generally, our perceptions about the world, including the social world, are shaped by society and can be thought of as part of a “social reality”, wherein some social truths are widely held and can exert influence over us 14 , 15 . Notably, whether or not these perceptions are accurate, they can shape our actions and beliefs, including our expectations or judgment of others 16 . To better understand the impact social realities, the role of second order beliefs (our beliefs about others’ beliefs) are increasingly highlighted as important contributors to and intervention point for contemporary social problems 17 , 18 . Indeed, there have been calls for a better understanding of the social determinants of collective behavior to be elevated to a major “crisis discipline” of our time 19 . Here, we investigate norm misperception in the climate policy context. Pluralistic ignorance refers to a systematic and shared misperception of a norm, where many people have the same misconception about what most people do or think 20 . For instance, college students have been found to collectively misperceive that drinking is more common and desirable among their fellow students than is actually the case 21 . In addition to perceptions of local community norms, pluralistic ignorance can also pertain to society-wide misperceptions 17 . For example, people may succumb to the “conservative bias”, whereby perceptions of public opinion lag behind actual public opinion by some decades, failing to reflect changes and anchoring on historic levels 22 . The conservative bias is particularly likely when public opinion has recently changed on a topic but policy and structural change has not yet resulted from this shift, leaving little concrete indication of a shift in norms 22 .

Previous work suggests there may be pluralistic ignorance on climate concern and some related policies amongst the US public. First, research on a related topic suggests that people systematically overestimate the percentage of others in their country who outright reject the existence of human-caused climate change, with representative samples from US, China, and Australia showing that although most in each country believe in man-made climate change, people underestimate the extent to which their fellow citizens do 23 , 24 , 25 . And, research using student samples has found that college students underestimate their peers concern about climate change, broadly 8 . More pertinent to climate policy, one study found that an online convenience sample underestimated Americans’ support to regulate CO2 as a pollutant (broadly, not in a specific policy framework), and concern about climate change 26 . Similarly, research on a sample of U.S. congressional staffers found that many underestimated the popularity of carbon pollution restrictions among the public in their district 27 . Further, work in the northeastern U.S. coastal states using an online convenience sample of Americans found that most underestimate support for regional decarbonization approaches like expanding offshore wind 28 . While piecemeal and unrepresentative, these scattered indicators are a cause for concern—one that demands a conclusive investigation of climate policy pluralistic ignorance using a representative sample to investigate concrete, major national climate policies.

Given the possible role of pluralistic ignorance in stalling progress on this existential threat, it is prudent to investigate fundamental, unanswered questions about pluralistic ignorance on climate policy support: Is pluralistic ignorance around climate policy common in the U.S.? Is it contained to specific pockets of Americans, or does it span many populations over many geographies? Does it affect only specific policies, or does it hold for a variety of climate change mitigation policies (e.g., those utilizing market instruments, as opposed to mandates, or direct investment in infrastructure)? As prior research has found that Americans underestimate fellow Americans’ belief in climate change 23 , it’s possible that they also underestimate public support across a range of climate change mitigation policies (i.e., they may expect lower policy support for any policy addressing a problem if they assume others don’t believe that the problem exists). If pluralistic ignorance is present in this context, how large are the misperceptions? Do some misperceptions exist, but perceptions are accurate about majority and minority opinion? Or do they surpass this level and result in misperceiving what the majority of Americans support?

The main objective of the present study is to provide clear and granular answers to the above questions. Additionally, there may be questions about the possible sources of misperception. One contributor to misperceiving popular opinion could be false consensus, where people pay selective attention to others’ beliefs that are similar to their own, and overestimate the number of people who agree with them 29 . Indeed, false consensus effects exist for belief in climate change and support for local renewable energy projects in the Northeast US 24 , 28 . As such, we might expect that U.S. conservatives underestimate support for climate mitigation policies to a greater extent as they have lower approval of said policies.

Second, when forming estimates of frequency or probability, people’s guesses are generally shaped by information that is more easily available or retrievable, reflecting an availability heuristic 30 . Thus, people’s estimates of national public opinion may show an outsized influence of local norms that are easier to witness firsthand or recall. Given this, people’s estimates of the nation as a whole may be swayed by their state-level norms such that those in more conservative states and those in states with fewer climate protests may underestimate climate policy support to a greater degree.

A third possible contributor is media consumption, particularly if media misrepresent public opinion 31 . News media coverage of scientific experts in the U.S. has historically given disproportionately too much time to climate change deniers 32 and presentations of conservatives as oppositional to climate change policy, while the conservative electorate is actually fairly divided on these issues 12 . Given differences in media coverage, one might expect that public opinion misperceptions would be particularly pronounced amongst those who consume news outlets that have been shown to be more inaccuracy-prone 33 .

In the present work, we investigate national misperceptions of support for transformative climate policies and broader concern about climate change and show that Americans experience pluralistic ignorance to such a magnitude and breadth that it can be considered a false social reality : Americans from all walks of life systematically underestimate public concern about climate change and policy support over a range of climate policies. The magnitude of the effect is such that those who want action are a supermajority (i.e., 66% or higher), while there is a ubiquitous perception across demographics that they are only a minority.

Study overview

To create a detailed picture of the state of pluralistic ignorance for climate policy, we use a large stratified sample of US adults ( N  = 6,119) through the Ipsos eNation Omnibus nationally representative panel to compare public opinion on climate change to perceptions of popularity of those same opinions. We commissioned this panel to oversample less-populous states to assess the extent of pluralistic ignorance for each state with greater precision, and aiming for a 10% margin of error for all states. For the full sample, this sample size is more than 80% powered to detect small national levels of pluralistic ignorance (effects as small as d  = 0.04), as well as being 80% powered to detect separate levels among Democrat, Republican, and Independent partisan groups (effects as small as d  = 0.07), allowing for very granular comparisons. For all national-level analyses, we applied weights from the survey provider to ensure representativeness (e.g., down-weighting data from smaller states that we oversampled).

Actual levels of U.S. public support on climate policies were obtained from nationally representative public opinion data available from Yale’s Program on Climate Change Communication (YPCCC), who used the same survey provider who collected the data for the present study (which may help account for any surveyor-specific sampling or data practices) 11 , 12 . We also use YPCCC’s state level estimates of public opinion (which are estimated from their national survey data via multilevel regression with post-stratification). These data were collected during the same year as the data in the present study (see Methods). Further, to avoid any differences in policy support estimates due to item wording in comparing actual levels to responses from our panel, we used precisely the same policy descriptions as used by YPCCC. Thus, if wording for any of the policy items is subtly leading to inflated (or deflated) support numbers, this wording should also lead to inflated (or deflated) estimates of opinion estimates; thus, specific item wording would be unlikely to create discrepancies between actual and perceived policy support.

We asked participants to estimate the percent of Americans who were at least somewhat concerned about climate change (see Methods for full survey text, and a discussion about using the phrase “climate change” vs “global warming” for this item). We then chose a set of specific climate policies especially relevant to the decarbonization of the US and the attainment of climate mitigation goals such as the 2015 Paris Agreement. We intentionally selected a set of climate change mitigation policies that varied in core features such as utilizing market instruments as opposed to mandates, or those that facilitate investment and the creation of infrastructure. For each policy, we asked participants to estimate the percent of Americans who would support it. Our list of policies included support for a carbon tax levied against fossil fuel companies and redistributed to Americans through tax breaks. The list also included a renewable energy standard that mandates 100% electricity generated by renewable energy in the near term—an essential step in decarbonizing our energy production 34 . And, as decarbonizing our energy infrastructure will require rapidly siting of wind and solar across the US, we also included support for siting renewables on public lands 34 . Given the need to consider infrastructure, jobs, and social equity in transitioning to renewable energy, we also asked participants to estimate the support for the Green New Deal (GND). Notably, large environmental policy packages like the GND and the American Jobs Plan may play a key role in passing environmental legislation, as research shows that bundling more redistributive, social equity, and job-creating measures into major environmental policies makes them more popular 35 .

Finally, we asked participants about their news consumption, political affiliation, and demographic characteristics, which we used to conduct an exploratory cross-sectional analysis of possible sources of pluralistic ignorance in norm perceptions.

Prevalence and magnitude of pluralistic ignorance

Figure  1 shows that the vast majority of Americans greatly underestimate how many of their fellow Americans worry about climate change and support transformative climate policies to remedy the situation. While most Americans believe that less than half of the country is worried about climate change ( M est  = 43.3), in actuality it is two-thirds ( M real  = 66), t (6118) = 70.9, d  = 0.92, P  < 0.001, 95% CI diff  = [22.0, 23.3] (see Methods for additional notes on these analyses). Americans’ estimates for major climate policy support is the same or even lower ( M s = 37–43%), when in fact two-thirds of the country or more support each of these policies (Table  1 ). The distributions of these estimates in Fig.  1 show two noticeable concentrations, one at around 50% and another around 25%, salient proportions that seem to serve as focal points for answering these questions, even though a similarly salient proportion—75%—would have been a far more accurate answer. The misperceptions in estimates are so robust that, for every item assessed, the estimates of the lowest 25% and of the middle 50% of respondents falls well below the true values. More precisely, between 79% and 88% of our national sample underestimate public concern or each policy support.

Boxes inside the violin plot represent the middle 50% of the sample, with a line at the median, while the minima and maxima illustrated represent the full range of responses (from 0–100%). The red line represents the true prevalence, as indicated by contemporaneous national polling 12 , 43 . RE refers to renewable energy. N  = 6119 survey participants.

We also asked participants for estimates of support in their home state, and found these perceptions (when averaged across states) to not vary substantially from the national-level estimates and to have very similar distributions (see Supplementary Fig.  1 in the Supplementary Information File). Overall, this pattern of results suggests that people misperceive support for climate action broadly, having non-specific and robust misestimates for support for a variety of climate policies. Indeed, in an exploratory factor analysis of the five responses shown in Fig.  1 , a single factor emerged (all other factors had eigenvalues <1).

Pluralistic ignorance across partisans and policies

Breaking these perceptions of national public concern and policy support down by partisan politics, we found that Democrats, Independents, and Republicans all estimate levels for climate concern and climate policy support below 50%, while actual values are much higher. However, Fig.  2 shows that Republicans’ estimates were reliably lower than Democrats’ by 5–12%, with Independents falling somewhere in between.

All judgments were elicited for everyone in either the entire nation or one’s state (not only for one’s fellow partisans). Items on the left labeled with “US” indicate estimates of support for policies at the national level, while those on the right labeled with “State” indicate estimates of support for those in participants’ own state. Actual partisan support levels available from contemporaneous polling (available for four US policies 12 ) are indicated by squares. Error bars represent 95% confidence intervals for the norm perception means illustrated. RE refers to renewable energy. GND refers to the Green New Deal. N  = 6119 survey participants, including 2777 Democrats, 1022 Independents, and 2320 Republicans.

For the national policy items, contemporaneous polling was available broken down by partisans, so we can compare partisans’ estimates of nationwide support to actual partisan levels of support. Figure  2 shows that when Democrats, Independents, and Republicans estimate how the nation feels on these issues, their estimates of other Americans’ support for these policies only really resemble actual Republican levels of policy support. In fact, even if individuals’ estimates for the nation as a whole were, for some reason, based solely on Republican levels of support, all partisan groups would still be underestimating support for policies like a carbon tax and siting renewables on public lands. While differences between partisans are consistent with false consensus effects (e.g., Democrats—who are more likely to personally support climate policy—tend to provide relatively higher estimates of others’ policy support than do Republicans), these effects are dwarfed by the absolute levels of misperception held by all Americans that strongly underestimates climate policy support.

For all policies and concern for climate change at the national level, as well as state level support for a carbon tax and concern for climate change, we were able to compare each participant’s norm estimates to available contemporaneous data on actual support levels. Doing so, we create difference scores for each participant’s estimate, which can be aggregated into pluralistic ignorance levels that we analyze below.

Reflecting the lower norm estimates by Republicans, Fig.  3 shows that Republicans’ opinion misperceptions are stronger in magnitude than Democrats’ and Independents’ across all items. Further, we find that all partisan groups underestimate concern for climate change at both the national and state level by roughly 20–30%. In policy support, we find that the magnitude of misperception is highest for support to site renewables on public lands, with underestimates closer to 35–40%. Underestimation is smaller for support for 100-percent renewable energy mandates, which is still between 20–25% lower than actual levels. Support for a carbon tax and a Green New Deal fall in between these levels.

Pluralistic ignorance is calculated as the difference between real and perceived norm levels, so greater values indicate real levels are higher than perceived norms (i.e. greater underestimation). All perceptions pertain to either the entire nation or one’s state (not one’s fellow partisans). Items on the left labeled with “US” indicate estimates of support for policies at the national level, while those on the right labeled with “State” indicate estimates of support for those in participants’ own state. Error bars represent 95% confidence intervals of the mean differences illustrated. RE refers to renewable energy, and GND refers to the Green New Deal. N  = 6119 survey participants, including 2777 Democrats, 1022 Independents, and 2320 Republicans.

We can also directly compare state and national pluralistic ignorance levels for the two items for which we have data for both (a carbon tax and worry about climate change) to test if estimates are more accurate for state than national items. Using a mixed model to predict pluralistic ignorance levels across these four items using a dummy-coded fixed effect for item location (state = 0 vs nation = 1) and random intercepts for participant and item type (carbon tax vs worry), we find no difference between the two, t (21762) = −0.94, P = 0.350, suggesting that people are equally inaccurate at estimating opinions of fellow denizens of their own state, relative to the entire US public.

Regional variation

Aggregating levels of pluralistic ignorance by state, we can map the magnitude of false norm perceptions across the country. Figure  4 shows that residents of all states underestimate how much the nation is worried about climate change and support climate policy (for separate maps for each policy, see Supplemental Fig.  2 and Supplemental Fig.  3 ). For both perceived popular worry and climate policy support, we see that the southern gulf states (e.g., Mississippi) tend to show the highest pluralistic ignorance. But, underscoring the ubiquity of this misperception, even liberal states such as California and New York underestimate climate policy support as much as many conservative states. In fact, no state was less than 20% off in their estimates of climate policy support. These errors are robust for the more proximal state-level estimates as well, where participants of virtually every state underestimated how concerned their fellow state residents were about climate change, and how much they supported a carbon tax (see Supplemental Fig.  4 ).

A shows pluralistic ignorance levels for worry about climate change by taking the difference from real and perceived national levels of climate change and averaging those levels across participants in each state. B shows levels of pluralistic ignorance for climate policy, calculated by averaging the difference between real and perceived support levels across the four national policies examined for each participant, and then averaging those levels of national policy support misperception for all participants in each state. N  = 6119 survey participants. In both panels, greater values indicate real levels are higher than perceived norms (i.e. greater underestimation in perception). The ± values represent the margin of error (half of the 95% confidence interval for each state’s mean).

Variation by demographics

We regressed pluralistic ignorance across items in a linear mixed model weighted to be nationally representative, with random intercept for participant and item, on the full battery of demographics assessed (see Methods). As shown in Supplementary Table  2 , we find a number of statistically significant factors. Consistent with false consensus effects, we find participant’s political orientation has a notable effect (with 22% underestimation for those who are very liberal to 33% for those who are very conservative). Race also has a notable impact, with 25% underestimation for white respondents to 35% underestimation for black respondents, and other races falling in between. Other demographic characteristics had smaller, but still statistically significant effects. For instance, those living in urban areas were about 29% off, while their suburban counterparts were 26% off (and rural respondents falling in between).

Notably, there was no demographic group for which the estimated range reached accurate levels—instead all groups assessed were at least 20% off. Further, some demographics which might have been anticipated to predict reduced misperceptions did have statistically significant effects, but were small shifts in absolute terms: Those who attended 12 years of schooling but never obtained a GED or diploma were 28% off, while those with a doctorate were still 27% off, just a single percentage point better.

Variation by local norms

In exploratory analyses, we assessed two state level predictors for their relationship to pluralistic ignorance levels across items with both known real and perceived levels: the voting margin for Biden in the 2020 election (used as a state-level proxy for prevalent political ideology), and the logged number of climate or environmental protests per capita (see Methods). The effects of these predictors were assessed in a multiple regression mixed model with random intercepts for participant and item, and controlling for the top five demographic variables shown to have an effect and likely vary by state (personal political orientation, race, employment status, age, and income). Consistent with an availability heuristic, we find that both indicators of local norms influence norm estimates: there is a significant effect for state political ideology b  = −0.02, t (39760) = 2.35, P  = 0.019, such that states with the highest margin for Biden had pluralistic ignorance levels of 25.5%, while those with highest margin for Trump were 28.1% off. We also find a significant effect for state-level environmental protests b  = −0.47, t (39980) = 2.32, P  = 0.020, such that states with the highest level of protest were estimated to have pluralistic ignorance levels of 25.9%, while those with the fewest protests were 28.3% off.

Variation by media consumption

In exploratory analyses, we assessed the relationship between news media consumption and pluralistic ignorance levels across items. Using a dummy-coded variable to compare consumers of each news outlet (those who view it at least weekly) to those who do not, we assess the effect of media consumption for each outlet in a multiple regression mixed model with random intercepts for participant and item. And as media consumption may vary based on demographics, we control for the full battery of demographics assessed here, including personal political orientation, education, age, race, and income. We find that consumers of all news media outlets underestimate climate concern and policy support by around 25–30% (see Fig.  5 , Panel A). Contrasting the differences between viewers and non-viewers of each outlet (see Fig.  5 , Panel B), we see relatively lower levels for consumers of public broadcasting (National Public Radio), and mainstream news outlets including major national papers (e.g., New York Times), major cable news outlets (e.g., CNN), national broadcast news networks (e.g., ABC). We see relatively higher levels for those who consume news from major conservative outlets like Fox News and other conservative outlets (e.g., Breitbart), as well as for other liberal outlets (e.g., The Nation).

A shows pluralistic ignorance levels for consumers of each news media source. B Shows effects on pluralistic ignorance levels comparing consumers to non-consumers of each news media source (zero = baseline levels of misestimates). Estimates in both panels are obtained from a mixed model contrasting viewers and non-viewers of each news source and controlling for participants’ demographics. Pluralistic ignorance levels of N  = 6119 participants are calculated by taking the difference from real and perceived levels of policy support and climate concern (greater values indicate real levels are higher than perceived norms, i.e. greater underestimation in perception), and controlling for the battery of demographics assessed (see Methods). Error bars are 95% confidence intervals of the means illustrated.

This pattern generally suggests that media exposure to outlets with less favorable coverage of climate change policy correspond with lower estimates of public support, with the increase in pluralistic ignorance for those consuming “other liberal outlets” as the exception. Notably, “other liberal outlets” was also the least consumed outlet, with only 15.5% regularly consuming it (95% CI = [14.6, 16.4]), while all other outlets were consumed by 20–63% of Americans. One possibility is that consumers of these liberal outlets recognize their news source both liberal and niche, and therefore presume others do not share their more liberal, pro-climate attitudes.

We find that roughly 80–90% of Americans underestimate the true level of concern for climate change as well as support for transformative climate policies like a carbon tax, 100-percent renewable energy mandates, and a Green New Deal. Not only are these misperceptions nearly universal in the country, but the magnitude is large enough to fully invert the true reality of public opinion: although polls show that a supermajority support these climate policies (66–80%), the average American’s estimate of public opinion suggests it is just a minority (37–3%, effect sizes of the difference ranging from d  = 0.91–1.48). In other words, supporters of major climate policies outnumber opponents 2 to 1, but Americans falsely perceive nearly the opposite to be true. In fact, Americans’ estimates for all national support for climate policies is roughly the same or even lower than even just Republican levels of support.

This misperception is highly robust, being present for all the climate policies assessed here, and true across the country: Americans in every state and of all major demographics are 20% or more off in their estimates of support for all climate policies. In all cases, Americans failed to understand that a strong majority of fellow Americans support climate policy, instead, estimating it to be a minority. Given both the ubiquity and magnitude of misperception, this represents a notable form of pluralistic ignorance, perhaps best described as a false social reality, defined here as a case where an inverted perception of the attitudes of others is nearly held by all in a society.

We also find preliminary evidence for possible sources of this misperception. Our results are partially consistent with previous theory and research on false consensus effects: 29 those who are less likely to support these policies (conservatives) are more likely to underestimate climate policy support by a greater degree. Our results are also consistent with previous theory and research on the conservative bias 22 , where people may anchor on more conservative historic levels of political attitudes, failing to update estimates to match current public opinion. Further, consistent with availability heuristics 30 , salient information from one’s local norms, such as the political ideology of those in one’s state, and the number of climate protests one might observe in their state, are also linked to these misperceptions, such that more liberal states and states with more climate protests have somewhat lower misperceptions. Finally, the news media that one consumes may also play a role: those who consume conservative outlets are more likely to have more erroneous views.

Beyond these contributing factors, there are additional psychological mechanisms that may help explain the effects found here. For example, it has been shown that many liberals experience “false uniqueness” whereby they falsely assume that their own opinions are less common than they really are 36 , which could explain why even liberals underestimate levels of support for climate mitigation policies by a large degree. Broadly, there are many psychological factors that are plausible contributors to the misperceptions documented here and warrant future research. Additionally, media consumption may correspond with other demographic features not controlled for here and the data used in analyses here are correlational in nature. So while recent research finds that media consumption plays a causal role in shaping political beliefs 37 , one should exercise caution in presuming media effect cause the pattern of results observed here until experimental data can confirm such effects.

These results have a number of concerning implications. The extent of pluralistic ignorance in this context presents at least two major hurdles for climate action. First, it undermines people’s willingness to discuss the issue 8 and thus obstructs organizing around it. And second, erroneously enlarged perceptions of the opposition’s numbers should increase conformity pressures to oppose climate policy 13 , diminishing motivation and political pressure to pursue these essential climate goals. Further, a perceived popular consensus around climate change may be key to reducing polarization around climate change as it can help bring conservatives closer to the majority of Americans on the issue 38 —while in the absence of this perceived consensus as seen here, polarization may thrive. If so, these misperceptions represent be a self-fulfilling prophecy: one where underappreciated levels of support for climate policy inhibit support for climate solutions needed, and undermine nascent efforts at substantive change.

The results of our study clearly establish pluralistic ignorance in the US climate policy context, and granularly maps it out, while offering an initial investigation into possible sources. Given the host of ways in which pluralistic ignorance may undermine climate policy support and action, these findings may help us understand the historic absence of major national climate policy despite solid majorities of the American public favoring strong action and setting goals such as net zero by 2050 39 . These results also underscore the need for future research to investigate and document the variety of possible contributing factors of pluralistic ignorance, including those explored here, particularly by utilizing experimental and causal evidence. Such work may help in developing and accessing practically relevant interventions. Norm misperceptions have been addressed by interventions in a variety of domains, such as those aimed at increasing perceptions of tax compliance 40 , reducing perceptions of heavy drinking on college campuses 18 , and reducing perceptions of that school bullying is approved of 41 . Our work suggests the importance of developing a similar intervention in the climate policy context to correct pluralistic ignorance and help empower efforts to pass transformative climate policies.

Participants

We used the Ipsos eNation Omnibus nationally representative panel to survey US adults ( N  = 6,119) between April and May in 2021. Ipsos calibrates respondent characteristics to be representative of the U.S. population where source of these population targets is U.S. Census 2019 American Community Survey data, including targets for region, gender, age, and household income. To recruit a greater number of participants from less populated states, Ipsos implemented a cap on the number of participants from larger states (ending recruitment from states after they reached N  = 250). This method allowed Ipsos to continue using their representative panel, but kept recruitment open for participants in smaller states. While the aim was not to recruit equal numbers from every state, this approach did improve recruitment of participants from small states that otherwise would have very small numbers. Ipsos provided weighed values used in all calculations of national levels to ensure representativeness. These post-hoc weights were made to the population characteristics on gender, age, race/ethnicity, region, and education. Ipsos implemented the following data quality control checks: removal of participants who took less than half of the median time, those who streaked responses in survey responses, and those who did not complete the survey. This survey provider was chosen for its high-quality data collection and for being the same provider used in polling actual levels of concern and support for identical items by the YPCCC, which is one of the most comprehensive polling efforts done on US climate opinion 11 .

Materials and procedure

For all norm estimates, participants responded using a free response question. Participants were asked to estimate the percent of Americans who were at least somewhat concerned about climate change, as well as the percent of Americans who supported each of the following climate policies: a carbon tax, a 100-percent renewable energy mandate for electricity, siting renewables on public lands, and a Green New Deal (GND). Each policy was shown given the same brief description as used in polling by the YPCCC (see Table  2 ). However, our phrasing did differ for the item about worry: while we asked about worry in “climate change”, YPCCC asked about worry in “global warming”. Another nationally representative sample of Americans 42 polled at the same time (early 2021) asked “How concerned are you about global climate change?”, and found similar (slightly greater) levels of concern about (72% at least “somewhat concerned”) compared to YPCCC’s data on “global warming” (66% at least “somewhat worried”). Differences in concern about climate change and global warming may lead to different precise levels of pluralistic ignorance. Participants were then asked to estimate concern and support for the same policies among those in their state of residence.

In comparing perceived levels to real levels for the items in Table  1 , we use a one sample t-test against a constant. Comparing against a constant value reflects the confidence held in the overall body of work YPCCC has collected, sampling tens of thousands of observations from nationally representative polls regularly for over a decade. However, one could choose to ignore the broader body of work and use a two-sample t -test comparing the perceived value to the specific poll selected for comparison. Doing so does not meaningfully change the results (Supplementary Table  1 ).

Next participants were asked for their media consumption of the following outlets: “Mainstream cable news (CNN, MSNBC)”, “New York Times, Huffington Post, or the Washington Post”, “News from ABC, CBS, NBC, or similar local or national TV broadcast news”, “NPR (radio or online)”, “Fox Cable News”, “Other conservative news, shows or radio (Breitbart, Drudge Report, Newsmax, Rush Limbaugh, The Blaze, OAN, etc.)”, and “Liberal news outlets (Democracy Now, The Intercept, The Nation, Salon, Mother Jones, Common Dreams, etc.)”. These were shown in a matrix with the following frequency options: “Never”, “Every few weeks”, “Once a week”, “Every few days”, “Almost every day or more”.

We used up-to-date polling data available from YPCCC, including the polling results published in 2021 on worry about climate change 43 and climate policy items 12 .

For the state levels of environmental and climate protests, we utilized the protest event data collected by the Crowd Counting Consortium 44 . Of these records, we selected protests from the past 5 years published in May 2021, and pertaining to climate, the environment, and/or energy. This dataset includes protests events with as few as 1 people in attendance, and many of these smaller events lack clear confirmation. Therefore, we only included protests with at least 100 attendees. This yielded 1046 protests of interest spread across the US. We then calculated protests per capita using the 2019 US Census estimates for each states’ population and logged the result to obtain a fairly normal distribution (skew = −0.28, kurtosis = 1.2; vs. skew = 6, kurtosis = 58.1 when not logged).

Demographic variables provided by IPSOS include political orientation, age, race, gender, education, income, employment, marriage and housing status, number of children, and whether participants live in an urban, rural or suburban area. This research was approved by an Internal Review Board at the home institution of the corresponding author and informed consent was obtained from all participants. Participants provided their informed consent prior to completing the survey. Data were analyzed in R (version 3.6.1) 45 .

Reporting summary

Further information on research design is available in the  Nature Research Reporting Summary linked to this article.

Data availability

All data analyzed are included in the supplementary data files (Supplementary Data File  1 for participant data; Supplementary Data File  2 for a participant data codebook; Supplementary Data File  3 for state-level data used; and Source Data for all figure source data).  Source data are provided with this paper.

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We thank Climate Central for their support and feedback on this research. The preparation of this manuscript was supported by National Science Foundation grant, SES-DRMS 2018063 to E.U.W. and G.S.

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Sparkman, G., Geiger, N. & Weber, E.U. Americans experience a false social reality by underestimating popular climate policy support by nearly half. Nat Commun 13 , 4779 (2022). https://doi.org/10.1038/s41467-022-32412-y

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Pluralistic Ignorance (Definition + Examples)

Have you ever been around a group of people, but you just can’t stand one of them? Maybe this is a friend of a friend, a colleague, or a family member’s new partner. They’re obnoxious, but you seem to be the only person that thinks so. Everyone else is perfectly polite to them. Out of politeness yourself, you don’t say anything about your opinion. Does this mean that everyone else loves this person that you think is obnoxious? No - the group may just be experiencing some pluralistic ignorance. 

Pluralistic ignorance is, at best, funny, and at worst, dangerous. The more people are aware of it, the more they can avoid it at work, in their friend groups, and in any other social setting. Leaders especially should know how to overcome pluralistic ignorance and foster an open and honest environment where people can freely express their feelings. That person that you don’t like, that everyone else seems to tolerate? As it turns out, everyone else might think they’re obnoxious, too. 

What Is Pluralistic Ignorance? 

Pluralistic ignorance is a phenomenon in which the majority of people disagree with the minority opinion, yet they believe the minority opinion to be the majority opinion. This happens because no one speaks up against the prevailing opinion, and assumes everyone else agrees because no one is speaking up. 

This usually takes place in smaller groups, like teams at work or friend groups. It can happen to people in a specific location or take place over a long period of time. Large groups, like a whole country’s worth of people, can avoid pluralistic ignorance through strategies like surveys or other anonymous means. 

Examples of Pluralistic Ignorance

You may recognize some of these examples of pluralistic ignorance. They happen all the time! Unfortunately, the consequences of this phenomenon can be very serious. 

Going Ahead With a Risk 

Your team gets together to talk about a new content strategy for your business. The message you want to share on your social media is risky and even tiptoes the line of what is appropriate to share with consumers. In your gut, you feel like you should workshop some other options, but as you look around the room, everyone is nodding along and agreeing to move forward. You start to question yourself. Are you just being sensitive? If everyone thinks that using a certain language is “okay,” then it should be okay, right? 

The team goes ahead with the content strategy and receives huge backlash. If someone had spoken up during those meetings, you could have avoided the consequences. 

Bad Behavior in a Bar 

Let’s say you go to a certain bar and a regular patron at the bar is a little creepy. His jokes don’t always land and he leans in a little too close to some of the female patrons as they are ordering drinks. As you and other people watch the regular’s behavior over a period of time, you can’t help but feel creeped out. But nobody says anything. As you look around and see that no one is rolling their eyes and female patrons are still coming back to the bar where this guy is sitting and ordering drinks, you wonder if you are just being judgmental. Maybe the guy is just being nice. Why else would people come back to the bar? 

Little do you know, a lot of people feel uncomfortable by this regular’s behavior, but the bar is the only place in town to go out on a Friday so they tolerate him. Unfortunately, the longer his behavior remains overlooked, the more he assumes that he is behaving appropriately and tries to push the limits even further.  

Pluralistic Ignorance in the Mormon Church

In the mormon subreddit, a user shared the definition of pluralistic ignorance and asked for examples related to the Mormon church. You can read the full post here . Comments include multiple examples of pluralistic ignorance in that community: 

• “ Very few of my peers pay a full 10% tithe (even if they declare themselves as full), but everyone thinks everyone else is paying 10%.” 
• “Ok, my example is for garments. Women in Utah county all have gym memberships. Why? So they can put on their yoga pants and tank tops to "go to the gym" and then to Sodalicious and then run errands and then to lunch, and then the kids are home, and "I didn't even have time to change today!" No. You didn't want to put back on the "approved" underwear. (Obviously, I support this, but it's apparent to the rest of us who just wear regular underwear why you would do this!) It's rampant, but the virtue signaling of the capped sleeve and garment line above the knee is something EVERYONE looks for... Except in "workout" clothes. Then, you get the sportswear exemption.
• “I would agree that this is a huge aspect of the church. For example, I know many people who privately find the rules of the word of wisdom to be arbitrary and stupid. But I’ll be damned if I ever hear anyone actually vocalize these feelings in a group setting. It’s a shame because I don’t think there’s a lot of room for people to voice their opinions.”

Why Does Pluralistic Ignorance Occur? 

If you’ve been in a situation like any of the ones mentioned above, you probably know the feeling of not wanting to speak up. You fear that you are the only person who feels the way you do. You don’t want to cause a scene or receive punishment for dissenting. Or, you assume that someone else will speak up if they feel the same way you do. Two phenomena in social psychology show why we feel uncomfortable speaking up, and how that discomfort can lead to a whole group assuming the wrong thing about your opinion. 

The Bystander Effect

If no one in a group is assigned a task, everyone may assume that someone else will take it on. Especially if the task requires you to cause a scene or separate yourself from the rest of the group. This phenomenon, called the Bystander Effect , can have dire consequences in emergencies. Maybe you are in a group of 10 people and someone starts choking. The first thing everyone in that group does is look around to see who is going to help. All this time of observing other people is only hurting the choking victim!

Ingroup Bias and Conformity 

In the earliest days of humanity, “going against the grain” was dangerous. No one wanted to separate themselves from their “tribe,” also known as the people who fed you, built your homes, or cared for you when you were sick. This mindset is still ingrained in us. We feel the urge to conform with others, even if those “others” are just people in the same room as us as we participate in a psychology experiment !

Low Confidence 

For all of these reasons, it takes a lot of bravery to go against the grain and voice what you believe is a minority opinion. It also takes confidence. If you are not confident that the people in your group will react to your dissenting opinion with respect, you may feel it’s safer for you to keep your mouth shut. Pluralistic ignorance may occur because everyone wants to protect themselves in an environment that does not actively protect the people within it. 

How To Overcome Pluralistic Ignorance

Pluralistic ignorance takes place when everyone on a team, in a space, or within a group makes assumptions. Reducing assumptions and increasing communication are the two best strategies for avoiding pluralistic ignorance and creating opportunities for dissent and debate. With these strategies, you will know that your team comes to the best solution, every time. 

Create an Environment Where Honesty Is Encouraged.

Let’s go back to the example with the bar. The “power dynamics” of the bar can discourage people from coming forward and calling out a regular’s bad behavior. Maybe the patrons assume that the regular is a friend of a bartender or the management. Or they assume that speaking out against the regular will get them dirty looks and weak drinks at the bar. Bars have not always been a place where it’s acceptable to call out creepy behavior, so what could the bar do to overcome those assumptions and encourage honesty? 

One option is to leave signs in the women’s room encouraging them to speak out against harassment. Here are some messages you might have seen at your local bar:

• “Feeling uncomfortable? Order a Screwdriver .” 
• “Call this number if you’re being harassed at the bar.” 
• We do not tolerate any sexism, racism, or harassment. Bad behavior? Let us know.”  

These short messages give patrons the opportunity to speak up, be honest, and express their opinion. It may not be the opinion of other people in the bar, but at least the conversation is happening.

Note that this initial responsibility - signs or other forms of communication - is on the employees and management of the space. Managers should train bartenders to communicate with patrons about the importance of being honest and expressing their concerns. Every staff member has a duty to create and foster a safe environment. 

Check In With Your “Team.” 

Sometimes, directly asking your team to express dissent will encourage them to do it. Let’s say you’re at a meeting and you’re about to decide on a content strategy for the next quarter. Before everything is confirmed and the decision is made, you ask your team for reasons why the strategy won’t work. You encourage the team to be creative in your responses and let them know that their concerns won’t be judged. This communicates a need for minority opinions, and those opinions are likely to come out.

Of course, one-off requests for minority opinions may not result in those opinions being shared if the overall environment discourages dissent or debate. As a team leader, you should always look for ways to encourage honesty. Maybe it’s easier for your team if you ask for their concerns over email or an anonymous survey. What’s important is that all team members feel safe in sharing how they feel, even when it “goes against the grain.”

Reward Dissent. 

How can you let team members know their concerns are welcomed? Reward them! Offer them praise when they express valid concerns (politely, of course,) or give promotions and responsibilities to the team members who aren’t afraid to express their opinion. Soon, other members will catch on. They’ll be more open and honest, too!

Related posts:

• Minority Influence (Psychology Definition)
• Gordon Allport Biography - Contributions To Psychology
• Social Impact Theory (Definition + Examples)
• Kurt Lewin Biography - Contributions To Psychology
• Social Loafing (Definition + Examples)

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Bystander Effect

The bystander effect, the antidote: be a hero..

Posted February 27, 2015 | Reviewed by Ekua Hagan

You may be familiar with the biblical parable of the Good Samaritan: A man from the ancient city of Samaria sees another man lying in the road. Many people ignored the man and pass him by; but the Samaritan stops to help him. He followed The Golden Rule: Do unto others as you would have them do unto you.

Fast forward a couple of millennia, and countries such as Australia, Canada, Israel, the US, and others have adopted laws to protect people like the Good Samaritan who render aid to those who are injured, ill, in danger or incapacitated. The laws are intended to reduce bystanders’ hesitation to assist for fear of being sued or prosecuted for unintentional injury or wrongful death.

In a perfect world, we would all help one another in times of need. In the back of our minds, we may think, “I will do this because one day I may need help and I hope someone is there for me.” It is reciprocal altruism in action; help others now to get help for oneself someday.

But the Golden Rule is challenged on a daily basis. People in need of help don’t get the support they require. Instead, others avert their eyes, turn their heads, and pass quickly by.

This is known as The Bystander Effect or Bystander Apathy. That term was coined by social psychologists, John Darley and Bibb Latane, who were teaching in New York City in the 1960s when the now-infamous Kitty Genovese murder occurred there. Despite her screams for help to ward off her assailant, none of the many residents in her large apartment complex came to Kitty’s aid.

Would you help?

We’d all like to think that when we see something bad happening – a person injured in an accident or someone being assaulted – that we’d step forward to help. But in reality, most of us don’t; it’s inconvenient, or we don’t want to get involved, or we think someone else will stop to assist instead.

Although some people won’t take the initiative to help, they will take the time to photograph or take a video the event and post it on the internet. Interestingly, studies over the last 45 years have proven that the greater the number of people observing an emergency, the less likely they are to help. Why is this? What happened to The Golden Rule? And what can we do to be more involved?

Why we don’t help

One reason may be that when a situation is unclear, then we look to others for clues to define what is happening. We then make decisions based, sometimes incorrectly, on other people’s actions, reactions or lack of action.

This is known as pluralistic ignorance — when the group’s majority privately believes one thing and mistakenly assumes that most others believe the opposite. For instance, when we drive past a car accident, we might assume that someone else will call 9-1-1 or stop to help. Pluralistic ignorance occurs frequently and in diverse situations.

In her post, Why Don’t We Help? Less Is More, at Least When It Comes to Bystanders , Melissa Burkley shares the following examples:

Pluralistic ignorance explains why my undergraduate students often fail to ask questions in class. Let's say that one of my students is confused about the class material I just covered and wants to ask me to clarify. Before raising her hand, she will likely look around to room to see if any of her fellow students seem confused or have their hand up as well. If no one else looks puzzled, she will conclude that she is the only one in the room that didn't get the material. To avoid looking stupid, she may choose to keep her hand down and not ask me her question. But as a teacher, I have discovered that if one student is unsure about the material, odds are most of the students are. So in this situation, my class is suffering from pluralistic ignorance because each one assumes they are the only one confused, when in fact all the students are confused and all of them are incorrectly concluding that they are the only one. The same process can occur when we witness an ambiguous emergency situation. All the bystanders may look to each other to determine if they are witnessing a crime , and if no one reacts, then everyone will wrongly conclude that this is not an emergency and no one will step up and help.”

Diffusion of responsibility

According to studies conducted by Darley and Latane, diffusion of responsibility is the second reason for the bystander effect. In their years of research, they discovered a paradox: that the greater the number of eyewitnesses, the less each witness felt responsible to help. The upshot is that if everyone assumes someone else will help, then no one does.

After interviewing study participants, Darley and Latane discovered that although their bystander subjects were by no means individually unsympathetic, they didn’t feel personally responsible enough to do anything. The participants did not think they were influenced by other bystanders to help or not; so evidence indicates we are unaware of the influence others have on our decision making . In fact, we are unaware of the unwritten social norm that silently emerges in those situations: Do Nothing.

Darley and Latane determined that the degree of responsibility a bystander feels depends on three things:

• Whether or not they feel the person is deserving of help
• The competence of the bystander
• The relationship between the bystander and the victim

What we can do

If you and several fellow bystanders are in an emergency situation, remember your instinct — as well as the instinct of those around you — may be to not render aid. But by being aware of the diffusion of responsibility progression, you may take action because we are all responsible for helping the victim. Once anyone helps, then in seconds, others will join in because a new social norm emerges: Do Something Helpful. That is the power of one.

If you need assistance in helping someone, look a bystander straight in the eyes and tell them to help. Pleading to a specific individual will make that person feel responsible and there is a good chance they too will pitch in.

You can also take charge of the situation and delegate tasks. This lessens the diffusion of responsibility process. The same is true if you are the victim: Don’t yell "help!" Instead, ask particular people near you to do a specific thing. For instance, tell the bystander in the blue shirt to lift you up, and another holding her dog to call 911.

Heroic Imagination Project

I started the Heroic Imagination Project (HIP) to help teach individuals the skills and awareness needed to make effective decisions in challenging situations. Each of us is a hero-in-waiting who by learning some basic skills become Heroes-in-Training. We’ve developed a number of programs designed to be useful, to help people gain meaningful insights and tools to use every day that can transform negative situations and create positive change. We teach people of all ages how to be everyday heroes by standing up, speaking out, and taking wise and effective action. To learn more about the bystander effect and ways to counteract it, check out my non-profit Heroic Imagination Project .

Each of us has an inner hero we can draw upon in an emergency. If you think there is even a possibility that someone needs help, act on it. You may save a life. You are the modern version of the Good Samaritan that makes the world a better place for all of us.

Phil Zimbardo

For more in-depth information about how your life is affected by the mental time zones that you live in, please check out our books: The Time Cure and The Time Paradox .

Buckley, Melissa. Why Don’t We Help? Less Is More, at Least When It Comes to Bystanders . Psychology Today.

Darley, J. M. & Latané, B. (1968). "Bystander intervention in emergencies: Diffusion of responsibility." Journal of Personality and Social Psychology.

Darley, J. M., & Latane, B. (1970). The unresponsive bystander: why doesn't he help? New York, NY: Appleton Century Crofts.

Sommers, Sam. " Why Crowds Make Us Callous ." Psychology Today.

Rosemary K.M. Sword and Philip Zimbardo are authors, along with Richard M. Sword, of The Time Cure: Overcoming PTSD with the New Psychology of Time Perspective Therapy.

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I Don't Believe that You Believe What I Believe: Experiment on Pluralistic Ignorance and Whistleblowing

41 Pages Posted: 17 Jun 2024

Behnud Mir Djawadi

Paderborn University

Sabrina Plaß

Sabrina schaefers.

Internal whistleblowing is nowadays referred to as a social phenomenon where the decision to blow the whistle is not only dependent upon one’s personal conviction but also on the perception of how others think about whistleblowing. One explanation for the relatively low occurrence of whistleblowing might be that these perceptions are mis-calibrated. We suggest that the phenomenon of pluralistic ignorance, which states that individuals mistakenly believe that the beliefs of others differ systematically from their own, might apply to the whistleblowing decision. To test for the existence of pluralistic ignorance we carry out a survey and an incentivized laboratory experiment. Our results show that, for individuals who are personally in support of whistleblowing, their incorrect perception that others are against it are negatively related to whistleblowing. In addition, we examine whether correcting these misperceptions via a social information intervention can encourage whistleblowing behaviour. While it does not prove to be effective for all individuals, the intervention does significantly increase the share of whistleblowers among those who are personally in support of whistleblowing.

Keywords: Whistleblowing, Social Norms, Pluralistic Ignorance, Normative Expectations, Personal Normative Belief

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Applying Pluralistic Ignorance to Student Engagement: One Item Set, Two Studies

Angie Miller

Friday, February 23, 2024

Pluralistic ignorance generally refers to “erroneous cognitive beliefs shared by two or more individuals about the ideas, feelings, and actions of others” ( O’Gorman, 1986, p. 333 ). This is a classic construct in social psychology, generally known as a means of exploring negative or risky behaviors of college student populations like drug and alcohol use ( Suls & Green, 2003 ) or sexual behaviors ( Kuperberg & Padgett, 2017 ). But how might it relate to a more modern and positive college student experience? 

We were able to address the concept of pluralistic ignorance in relation to certain aspects of student engagement with the development of an experimental item set from the 2018 NSSE administration. The existing approach for measuring pluralistic ignorance involves asking respondents to make two assessments of behaviors: one using the self as the reference point (During the current school year, about how often have you done the following?), and one using peers as a reference point (During the current school year, about how often do you think most other students at your institution have done the following). This item set was given to 5,025 first-year students and 5,487 seniors at 33 institutions, and the data was then used for two different studies based on this established paradigm for assessing pluralistic ignorance through comparing the self vs. other reference responses. 

NSSE Research Scientist Angie Miller partnered with University of South Florida professor Amber Dumford and a group of graduate students to focus on research questions about social media use and campus activity involvement. The study on social media use, published in Computers and Education Open , found that students perceived others to be both posting and viewing social media more than themselves. This was true for both first-year students and seniors. However, there were also some differential patterns by (institution-reported) sex, with males perceiving a large self-other gap. There was also a main effect for sex, meaning that females perceived both themselves and other students to be posting and viewing social media more frequently than males. These findings add some nuance to our understanding of students’ use of social media as part of their overall educational experience, and how those perceptions of their classmates might affect their own behavior in a variety of ways.

Another study looked at campus involvement. Generally considered a behavior that we should encourage in students, this is a more positive conceptualization of the pluralistic ignorance construct. This article, published in The Journal of Campus Activities Practice and Scholarship , explored students’ self vs. other perceptions of how often they attend campus activities and events, as well as an estimate of weekly hours spent participating in co-curricular activities. Overall, the findings from these analyses also found evidence of pluralistic ignorance, meaning that students perceive other students to attend more campus activities and spend more time on co-curriculars than they themselves do. For seniors, there was also an effect for (institution-reported) sex, with this discrepancy slightly larger for females. This application of pluralistic ignorance might help in advising students on how much time they should be spending outside of the classroom in co-curricular activities, taking into account their perceptions of their peers.

These studies illustrate how NSSE data can be used to address some more modern takes on an older, established psychological concept. The results demonstrate that pluralistic ignorance is still relevant to our understanding of college students, and that it can be applied to both positive and negative behaviors. Given this, can we develop new ways to help students “re-calibrate” their self-other comparisons for a more accurate understanding? This research will hopefully invite faculty, advisors, and administrators to discuss and even counter the misconceptions of social cues and norms that students may have, prompting students to consider how perceptions of their classmates might affect their own behavior in both positive and negative ways.  

Full article citations:

Dumford, A. D., Miller, A. L., & Rijo, A. (2023). That’s your cue: Comparing male and female students’ perceptions of social norms around involvement on campus. The Journal of Campus Activities Practice and Scholarship, 5 (3), 37-50 . https://doi.org/10.52499/2023025

Dumford, A. D., Miller, A. L., Lee, K., & Caskie, A. (2023). Differences in college students’ perceptions of their social media usage in relation to their peers. Computers & Education Open, 4, 100121.  https://doi.org/10.1016/j.caeo.2022.100121

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