Pluralistic ignorance

Pluralistic ignorance is a social psychology phenomenon in which people mistakenly believe that others mostly hold a different opinion than their own, so they go along with views they do not hold. Floyd Allport and Daniel Katz used the term for the first time in a 1931 book, and Prentice and Miller's study of campus drinking found that students believed peers were far more comfortable with drinking than they themselves were. A 2022 Nature Communications survey of 6,119 Americans found that 66-80% supported major climate-mitigation policies, while respondents estimated only 37-43% support on average.