On the rationality of pluralistic ignorance

نویسندگان

  • Jens Christian Bjerring
  • Jens Ulrik Hansen
  • Nikolaj Jang Lee Linding Pedersen
چکیده

Pluralistic ignorance is a socio-psychological phenomenon that involves a systematic discrepancy between people’s private beliefs and public behavior in certain social contexts. Recently, pluralistic ignorance has gained increased attention in formal and social epistemology. But to get clear on what precisely a formal and social epistemological account of pluralistic ignorance should look like, we need answers to at least the following two questions: What exactly is the phenomenon of pluralistic ignorance? And can the phenomenon arise among perfectly rational agents? In this paper, we propose answers to both these questions. First, we characterize different versions of pluralistic ignorance and define the version that we claim most adequately captures the examples cited as paradigmatic cases of pluralistic ignorance in the literature. In doing so, we will stress certain key epistemic and social interactive aspects of the phenomenon. Second, given our characterization of pluralistic ignorance, we argue that the phenomenon can indeed arise in groups of perfectly rational agents. This, in turn, ensures that the tools of formal epistemology can be fully utilized to reason about pluralistic ignorance.

برای دانلود متن کامل این مقاله و بیش از 32 میلیون مقاله دیگر ابتدا ثبت نام کنید

ثبت نام

اگر عضو سایت هستید لطفا وارد حساب کاربری خود شوید

منابع مشابه

To specialize or to innovate? An internalist account of pluralistic ignorance in economics

Academic and corporate research departments alike face a crucial dilemma: to exploit known frameworks or to explore new ones; to specialize or to innovate? Here I show that these two conflicting epistemic desiderata are sufficient to explain pluralistic ignorance and its boom-and-bust-like dynamics, exemplified in the collapse of the efficient markets hypothesis as a modern risk management para...

متن کامل

A Logic Approach to Pluralistic Ignorance

In this paper, the possibility of modeling the phenomenon “pluralistic ignorance” from social psychology, using epistemic/doxastic logic, is investigated. It is shown that the straightforward formalization of pluralistic ignorance does not capture the phenomenon completely. What is needed in addition is an assumption about the interplay between different agents’ beliefs or an assumption about h...

متن کامل

Pluralistic ignorance: Conceptual framework, antecedents and consequences

Purpose: The aim of this paper is to present, in an integrated manner, the knowledge acquired about pluralistic ignorance in the fields of social psychology, sociology and business. Particularly, to identify the factors that work as antecedents of pluralistic ignorance, as well as its consequences, in various research contexts. Design/methodology: This integrative study on pluralistic ignorance...

متن کامل

What do Moral Educators Know About Their Students? A Study of Pluralistic Ignorance

This study's the question how well moral educators know their students' moral views, is part of the more general question whether they base their efforts to foster moral development on adequate understanding of children. The findings show that most teachers indeed seem to possess a stereotypical image of the student. In order to reduce pluralistic ignorance, I recommend that moral educators sho...

متن کامل

A Novel Private Attitude and Public Opinion Dynamics Model for Simulating Pluralistic Ignorance and Minority Influence

Pluralistic ignorance, a well-documented socio-psychological conformity phenomenon, involves discrepancies between private attitude and public opinion in certain social contexts. However, continuous opinion dynamics models based on a bounded confidence assumption fail to accurately model pluralistic ignorance because they do not address scenarios in which non-conformists do not need to worry ab...

متن کامل

ذخیره در منابع من


  با ذخیره ی این منبع در منابع من، دسترسی به آن را برای استفاده های بعدی آسان تر کنید

برای دانلود متن کامل این مقاله و بیش از 32 میلیون مقاله دیگر ابتدا ثبت نام کنید

ثبت نام

اگر عضو سایت هستید لطفا وارد حساب کاربری خود شوید

عنوان ژورنال:
  • Synthese

دوره 191  شماره 

صفحات  -

تاریخ انتشار 2014