Pluralistic Ignorance

Day 239 / 365

We all believe that the actions of a single person can’t have any considerable large scale effect. Which is why we chose to just go with the norm, thinking we are the minority. But what if there were others that thought the same, and what if people like this, opposing the norm, were actually the majority? That is the situation that’s known as Pluralistic Ignorance

Pluralistic Ignorance is a scenario in which the majority of the members of a group privately believe against the norm, but they don’t do anything about it because they think they are the only one with that opinion.

Here’s a simple example. You go to a park and see there is some litter near the trash can. You know you can easily pick it up and put it in the bin, and you want to do that as well. But you look around and there are lots of people who surely would have seen this to, but ignored it. You don’t want to be the odd one out, and therefore you choose to ignore it well.

As you might imagine, this psychological phenomenon is not such a great thing. It causes people not to take action, and that’s the reason behind a lot of the things that are wrong with the world right now.

This post is part of my 365 Day Project for 2019. Read about it here

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