According to a study from scholars at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, the vast majority of the American population is pro-diversity and inclusion. Despite this prevalent viewpoint, most Americans significantly underestimate their fellow citizens’ support for diversity initiatives in the United States.
In a series of five experiments with nearly 5,500 American participants, the study authors found a consistent pattern of “pluralistic ignorance,” the phenomenon of misperceiving one’s peers’ opinions and preferences. The first experiment asked a sample of participants how strongly they agreed with 15 pro-diversity statements, as well as their perception of how the American population would respond. Overall, the average actual support for diversity was 82.26 percent, but perceived support was just 55.05 percent, resulting in a 27.17 percent difference between actual and perceived agreement. The second experiment replicated these findings with a second participant sample, finding a 27.61 percent difference in actual and perceived support for diversity.
For the third experiment, the authors recruited a nationally representative sample and presented them with six of the 15 statements used in the first two studies. The observed difference was 12.73 percent. In the fourth experiment, the authors found participants both underestimated others’ support for pro-diversity statements and overestimated the support for anti-diversity statements. Notably, most demographic variables were unrelated to participants’ responses, suggesting pluralistic ignorance is a general phenomenon among all Americans.
In the fifth experiment, the authors recruited a sample of Trump voters and Biden voters. They found Trump voters more accurately estimated the low level of support for pro-diversity statements among their fellow Trump voters, but significantly underestimated Biden voters’ support for diversity. In contrast, Biden voters underestimated the level of diversity support for both Trump and Biden voters.
Next, the authors conducted two additional experiments to determine if pluralistic ignorance could be corrected. One study included a sample of White Americans who lived in states that voted for Biden in 2020, while the other included a sample of White Americans who lived in states that voted for Trump in 2020. For both experiments, the participants played a two-truths-and-a-lie game in which they were presented with three statistics relating to diversity and inclusion and asked to identify the incorrect statistic. They were then asked to complete a questionnaire on their own diversity-related opinions.
In both Democrat-leaning and Republican-leaning states, participants who were exposed to accurate information about the overall high levels of public support for diversity were more likely to be pro-diversity and more likely to engage in diversity-related discussions.
“Our findings suggest an agenda for the future: Our goal should be to communicate about the actual high percentages of support for diversity and inclusion,” the authors write. “By helping people to form accurate impressions of their peers’ pro-diversity attitudes, we will interrupt the ‘spiral of silence’ and, consequently, get people to behave in a more inclusive manner and be more willing to put resources into policies that reduce systemic disparities between marginalized and non-marginalized groups.”
