Group silence over the news masks members’ shared ignorance, as each fears revealing it.

Evidence

But I was not entirely sure of this interpretation until Betsy explained how silence worked to hide ignorance. I had asked if she had to read the newspaper in whose ad department she worked. ‘‘No, only for layout, to make sure the graphics are straight.’’ The week before, her boss told her to ask one of the paper’s advertisers whether his organization wanted to continue a longstanding ad, concerning voluntary aid to help the leftist Nicaraguan government of 1979-90, a few weeks after the leftists had lost an election. The elections had been on the front pages for quite a while, ‘‘and the advertiser said, “Well, no, not since the election in Nicaragua,’ and I just said … I didn’t know anything about it [the Nicaraguan election]. I’ve heard people say what they said, but I’ve also heard people say the opposite, that it was a good thing, and I don’t know how to tell the difference. I don’t even know enough to know what to believe. It all goes back to my bad memory. I just don’t have a memory. That’s why I can’t get a better job, too. Other girls at work can remember all the different word processing programs, and I can’t even remember one. — Nina Eliasoph, Avoiding politics, 805

Categorization

• XREF: Connects to the spiral of silence literature and Noelle-Neumann — but here it is ignorance, not minority dissent, that silences, inverting the classic mechanism. — connects to: Members avoided serious conversation and stayed ignorant of each other’s basic facts — Nina Eliasoph, Avoiding politics: how Americans…, 779; A news joke met with silence because no member dared admit ignorance. — Nina Eliasoph, Avoiding politics: how Americans…, 800; Collective public commitment dissolves pluralistic ignorance by revealing shared doubt — , The Rod and the Child: A Global History…, 7371
• QUESTION: Is the fear of revealing ignorance a distinct mechanism from avoiding political disagreement, or the same underlying status-protection impulse?

Broader Connections

• A news joke met with silence because no member dared admit ignorance. #exemplifies (0.95) — Nina Eliasoph, Avoiding politics, 800
• Collective public commitment dissolves pluralistic ignorance by revealing shared doubt #contradicts (0.82) — , The Rod and the Child, 7371