Uh, Kretch and Crutchfield, these earlier, early pluralistic ignorance researchers, described it as a situation where no one believes, but everyone thinks that everyone believes.

A famous example is, uh, the situation when, um, uh, that, uh, it's very often experienced among bystanders, um, in emergency situations, where each individual bystander, um, thinks that they're the only ones who, who...

the only person who is uncertain of what to do.

They think that everybody else is acting out of confidence and certainty, whereas they themselves, um, are, um, are feeling uncertain and unsure.

Um, that's why that is, that, that- Um, misinterpretation, if you will, is the reason why bystanders are so unlikely to act in cases of emergencies.

It's because they assume that other people are not acting, are not taking action because they know that it's, it wouldn't be appropriate or it wouldn't be needed or it wouldn't be right to take action, uh, whereas they themselves are uncertain and confused.

Um, so it's a-- you're, you're, you're behaving the same way as another person, but you're feeling differently about it.

But if you ask a social scientist about pluralistic ignorance, they will usually bring up the work of Deborah Prentice, who in the nineteen nineties, along with her colleague Dale Miller, investigated the impact of this phenomenon on drinking behavior, specifically at Princeton, which at the time held these class reunions, which held the record for the second highest level of alcohol consumption for any event in the United States other than the Indianapolis Five Hundred.