Pluralistic ignorance and political correctness: The case of affirmative action

The pressure to appear politically correct can have important consequences for social life. In particular, the desire to appear politically correct, a nd to avoid bring seen as racist, sexist, or culturally insensitive, can le nd people to espouse publicly support for politically correct issues, such as support for affirmative action, despite privately held doubts. Such disc repancies between public behavior and private attitudes, when accompanied b y divergent attributions for one's own behavior and the identical behavior of others, can lead to pluralistic ignorance. Two studies investigated plur alistic ignorance with respect to affirmative action among undergraduates. Their survey responses indicate that people overestimate their peers' suppo rt for affirmative actin and underestimate their peers' opposition to affir mative action, that people's ratings of the political correctness of suppor ting affirmative action are correlated with their overestimation of support for affirmative action, and that people view their own attitudes toward af firmative action as unique.