Pluralistic ignorance: When similarity is interpreted as dissimilarity.

Pluralistic ignorance occurs when individuals infer that the identical actions of the self and others reflect different internal states. We propose that pluralistic ignorance arises most commonly in contexts where individuals believe that fear of embarrassment is a sufficient cause for their own behavior but not for the behavior of others. Three predictions derived from the proposed analysis were tested. In Experiment I, we examined the hypothesis that people believe that they possess more of those traits that lead to social inhibition than do others. Ratings of the self and the average other on a series of trait dimensions supported this hypothesis. In Experiment 2, we pursued the hypothesis that people believe that fear of embarrassment is a more potent determinant of their own behavior than of the behavior of others. Subjects first were given an opportunity to engage in or refrain from engaging in an action that potentially had both beneficial and embarrassing consequences. They then were asked to estimate the percentage of other subjects whom they believed would act similarly. Consistent with the predictions, subjects both avoided the embarrassing course of action and overestimated the percentage of others who took it. In Experiment 3, groups of subjects were placed in the same context that confronted the individual subjects in Experiment 2. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)