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Collective Errors and Errors about the Collective

Princeton University

Deborah A. Prentice

Princeton University

This article focuses on the circumstances in which individuals mistakenly assume that their beliefs, perceptions, and feelings differ from those of their peers. Pluralistic ignorance, as this phenomenon is called, yields numerous significant consequences for the self (e.g., illusory feelings of deviance) and for the collective (e.g., the perpetuation of unpopular social norms). It also illustrates several important ways in which the self and the collective influence each other. The authors propose that pluralistic ignorance has its roots in collectively shared misconceptions about the relative power of different motives. Specifically, it occurs when widely shared but erroneous social representations of human motivation lead people to view the motive guiding their behavior as one that would not exert a comparable influence on the behavior of others.

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