Editing Pluralistic ignorance (section)

== History ==
[[Floyd Henry Allport|Floyd Allport]] first discussed the phenomenon of "literal attitude behavior inconsistency" in 1924, observing society's tendency to conform to social norms at a large scale even in the absence of personal agreement to those social norms.<ref name="Psychology Press-1999" /> In an effort to explain this inconsistency, Allport presented the idea that individuals do not often act on personal conviction unless they believe those convictions are shared by the individuals around them.<ref name="Psychology Press-1999" /> In Allport's 1931 book titled ''Students Attitudes: A Report of the Syracuse University Research Study'', which he co-wrote with his student [[Daniel Katz (psychologist)|Daniel Katz]], the term "pluralistic ignorance" was used for the first time.<ref name="Miller-2023" />

[[Floyd Henry Allport|Allport]] and his students Daniel Katz and [[Richard Schanck]] produced studies of attitude change, racial stereotyping and prejudice, and their pursuit of the connections between individual psychology and social systems helped to found the field of [[Industrial and organizational psychology|organizational psychology]].<ref>{{cite journal |last1=O'Gorman |first1=Hubert J. |date=October 1986 |title=The discovery of pluralistic ignorance: An ironic lesson |journal=Journal of the History of the Behavioral Sciences |volume=22 |issue=4 |pages=333–347 |doi=10.1002/1520-6696(198610)22:4<333::AID-JHBS2300220405>3.0.CO;2-X}}</ref><ref name="Miller-2023" />

Further behavioral, economic, and social psychology research was done by [[Todd Rose]] to demonstrate the interchangeability of the terms pluralistic ignorance and collective illusions. His findings of historical events, scientific studies and social media patterns indicate that by using either term one is saying the same thing. The societal systems like ours unconsciously participate in perpetuating false beliefs and narratives with a desire to fit in.<ref>{{cite book |last1=Rose |first1=Todd |url=https://books.google.com/books?id=AoOAzgEACAAJ |title=Collective Illusions: Conformity, Complicity, and the Science of Why We Make Bad Decisions |date=February 2022 |publisher=Hachette Books |isbn=978-0-306-92568-9 |language=en}}</ref>

Although social psychologists, such as Allport and Katz, initiated the development of pluralistic ignorance, work pertaining to this phenomenon has since been heavily conducted by sociologists and public opinion researchers.<ref name="Miller-2023" /> This shift, in part, can be attributed to laboratory experiments, the primary research method of social psychology, proving insufficient in studying the inconsistencies between attitudes and norms.<ref name="Miller-2023" />

As Allport was the first person to bring awareness to the phenomenon of pluralistic ignorance, it is important to point out that his analysis of this phenomenon was strictly at the individual level.<ref name="Sargent-2021" /> He strongly disagreed with expanding the discussion to the larger group and involving the concept of shared cognition, "the collective cognitive activity from individual group members where the collective activity has an impact on the overall group goals and activities."<ref name="Sargent-2021" /><ref>{{Citation |last1=Razzouk |first1=Rim |title=Shared Cognition |date=2012 |url=https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-4419-1428-6_205 |encyclopedia=Encyclopedia of the Sciences of Learning |pages=3056–3058 |editor-last=Seel |editor-first=Norbert M. |access-date=2023-12-14 |place=Boston, MA |publisher=Springer US |language=en |doi=10.1007/978-1-4419-1428-6_205 |isbn=978-1-4419-1428-6 |last2=Johnson |first2=Tristan|url-access=subscription }}</ref>

This is not a unanimous stance for all those who have studied pluralistic ignorance. Sargent and Newman acknowledge that the individual aspects of pluralistic ignorance are important to discuss, but are lacking in providing a full picture of all the moving parts at play in the study of pluralistic ignorance.<ref name="Sargent-2021" /> In their perspective, pluralistic ignorance is defined as "a group-level phenomenon, wherein individuals belonging to a group mistakenly believe that others' cognitions (attitudes, beliefs, feelings) and/or behaviors differ systematically from their own, regardless of how the misperception arises".<ref name="Sargent-2021" />