Plural ignorance

The articles pluralistic ignorance and spectator effect overlap thematically. Help me to better differentiate or merge the articles (→  instructions ) . To do this, take part in the relevant redundancy discussion . Please remove this module only after the redundancy has been completely processed and do not forget to include the relevant entry on the redundancy discussion page{{ Done | 1 = ~~~~}}to mark. Zulu55 ( discussion ) Ignorance 09:49, Sep 2. 2015 (CEST)

Pluralistic ignorance is a term from social psychology . He describes the situation in which a majority secretly rejects a norm, but incorrectly believes that the majority accepts that norm (for example: "everyone believes that everyone else believes in it, while in reality no one believes it").

Daniel Katz and Floyd Allport coined the term in 1931.

If a group of people is in an ambiguous, difficult to assess situation and nobody knows what to do, those present try to get clues to possible meaningful behavior from observing the other. The group exerts informative social influence on its individual members . But if the others are also at a loss, pluralistic ignorance arises . This leads - together with the diffusion of responsibility - in an emergency situation to the fact that no one intervenes or helps, as each individual adapts to the passive behavior of the crowd. This can have fatal consequences if no one breaks out of this pluralistic ignorance and becomes a model that the other bystander ( viewers ) can follow.

The term became known through its use in the decision model of bystander intervention by Bibb Latané and John M. Darley , with which the provision of assistance or failure to provide assistance in emergency situations is to be explained by the number of witnesses ( bystander effect ). Emergency situations can easily be ambiguous or difficult to interpret, which cannot be classified by the cues of the situation itself. In such ambiguous situations, people try to gain information about their environment by using the reactions of other people as an aid to interpretation.

See also

• Groupthink
• Deindividuation

literature

• Latané, Darley (1968): Group inhibition of bystander intervention . Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 10, pp. 215-221.
• Latané, Darley (1970): The unresponsive bystander: Why doesn't he help? . Eaglewood Cliffs, NJ: Prentice Hall.

Individual evidence

1. ^ Daniel Katz and Floyd H. Allport: Student Attitudes . Craftsman, Syracuse, NY 1931.
2. ^ E. Aronson , TD Wilson, RM Akert: Social Psychology . Pearson study. 6th edition 2008. ISBN 978-3-8273-7359-5 , p. 369.