Pluralistic Ignorance among Assembled Peers

Abstract

Sociologists have long been interested in pluralistic ignorance—situations where a majority of individuals assume that most of their peers think differently than themselves when, in fact, their attitudes are similar. Recently, sociologists have suggested that pluralistic ignorance is especially likely to occur when peers are gathered together and may explain why group members often refrain from discussing their ultimate concerns with each other. However, researchers have not indicated what factors besides physical proximity might create pluralistic ignorance. Nor have they employed methods that can specify how causal factors combine to produce multiple routes to pluralistic ignorance. To remedy this situation, this article suggests several factors that may make others' opinions more or less transparent. It also proposes an analytical strategy that can identify which combinations of these factors are associated with misperceptions and illustrates how it might be applied. Implications of this study for future research are discussed.

Do as I say: contradicting beliefs and attitudes towards sports concussion in Australia

“…Similar to the study recently reported by Kroshus et al (2015) who found that the players who though that 'most athletes' would report concussions, were themselves the least likely to underreport their own head injuries during the season; the findings from this study may also involve the phenomena of what has been termed 'pluralistic ignorance' (Grant, O'neil, & Stephens, 2009). As proposed in the sociology literature, pluralistic ignorance refers to where the majority of individuals perceive that most of their peers think differently to themselves when, actually, individual attitudes are similar.…”

“…In other words, we did not ascertain if individuals in our cohort felt that others thought similarly to them. Further, given the prominence of the issue of sports concussion in recent years, examination is required to investigate if interpersonal networks and socio-technical conditions (such as social media) can combine to produce pluralistic ignorance (Grant et al, 2009) and misperceptions of students about their peers' attitudes and knowledge.…”

Got spirit? The spiritual climate scale, psychometric properties, benchmarking data and future directions

“…If receiving feedback about the progress of quality improvement initiatives is associated with stronger spiritual climate scores, then perhaps future interventions could target spiritual climate improvements and discussions (feedback) with healthcare workers. While specific interventions to augment spiritual climate in healthcare workers have not been reported in the literature to date, Grant et al reported that nurses who attended meetings where spirituality was frequently discussed were much more cognizant of their colleagues’ desire to express and talk openly about spirituality [ 4 ]. Spiritual climate was related to teamwork climate in our study.…”

“…Whereas prior research had focused almost exclusively on religious affiliations, practices and values , subsequent studies were primarily concerned with the personal meanings that people attached to spirituality. Workplace spirituality was defined by Ashmos and Duchon [ 3 ], as “the recognition that employees have an inner life that nourishes and is nourished by meaningful work that takes place in the context of community” [ 4 ]. Organizations that embrace workplace spirituality by encouraging the respectful expression of diverse spiritual views have staff who report bringing more of their “complete selves” to work [ 2 , 5 ].…”

Assessment of Conventional and Advanced Methodologies: Application of Configurational Approach and Fuzzy Set Theory in Emotional Labor Research

“…Refinement of causal conditions is done by excluding all the irrelevant conditions that do not lead to the outcome due to contextual reasons. Such measures ensure parsimony in qualitative comparative analysis and enable the researchers to closely reexamine the causal conditions (Grant, O'Neil and Stephens, 2009). Later for empirical analysis through QCA, these recipes are organized in the form of truth tables.…”