A Logical Analysis of Pluralistic Ignorance
Bibliographic Data
| ID | 20142671 |
|---|---|
| Authors | Jie Fan (0000-0003-2441-5019, School of Humanities University of Chinese Academy of Sciences Beijing China, corresponding author), Mingzheng Lu (School of Philosophy Beijing Normal University Beijing China), Guanghui Liu (0000-0002-3760-0785, School of Philosophy Shanxi University Taiyuan China) |
| Year | 2026 |
| Publication date | 2026-04-13 |
| Peer Reviewed | Yes |
| Open Access | Yes |
| Type | ARTICLE |
| Venue | Theoria (JOURNAL) |
| Journal identifiers | ISSN: 0040-5825 • E-ISSN: 1755-2567 |
| Publisher | Wiley (PUBLISHER • GB) |
| DOI | 10.1111/theo.70082 |
| OpenAlex | W7154031409 |
| Language | EN |
| References cited | 14 |
In this paper, we give a logical analysis of pluralistic ignorance, which is an important social phenomenon. There has been no consensus about the definition of pluralistic ignorance in the literature. From an epistemic point of view, there are at least three definitions of pluralistic ignorance. We choose three definitions among them, which, for us, are natural to explain many classic examples of phenomenon of pluralistic ignorance in the literature of social and behavioural sciences, e.g., (American) college campuses, The Emperor's New Clothes. To the best of our knowledge, there has been no logical study on the three definitions of pluralistic ignorance yet. We take the three operators of pluralistic ignorance induced by the definitions as first‐class citizens and investigate their logical properties, including the similarities, differences and the interactions, where we find some interesting results; in particular, under the assumption that beliefs are consistent and negatively introspective, a group cannot be second‐order pluralistically ignorant, and thus not be any higher order pluralistically ignorant. This contrasts with Fitch's result in “Ignorance of ignorance” (Kit Fine, Synthese , 2018) that under the same assumption, one may be second‐order ignorant, even though under the assumption of the modal system S4 (semantically, the class of transitive and reflexive frames), one cannot know that one is second‐order ignorant
Ignorance · Logical conjunction · Phenomenon · Reflexivity · Social phenomenon · Transitive relation · Embodied and Extended Cognition · Epistemology, Ethics, and Metaphysics · Logic, Reasoning, and Knowledge
Theory and problems of social psychology.
Pluralistic ignorance in the bystander effect
Ignorance of ignorance
On the rationality of pluralistic ignorance
The discovery of pluralistic ignorance
Pluralistic ignorance
Pluralistic ignorance and alcohol use on campus
Learning from the Behavior of Others
Who's Going to Make the First Move? Pluralistic Ignorance as an Impediment to Relationship Formation
The Emperor's Dilemma
| Citation velocity | historical |
|---|---|
| Highly cited | No |