Pluralistic Ignorance—A Replication and Extension

Abstract

This paper presents the results of a replication and extension of a previous study showing that white Americans seriously misperceive the racial values of other whites around them. Based on a 1970 national sample survey, the new data confirm the earlier findings that whites tended to overestimate white support for racial segregation and that this tendency was related to their own racial values. The second study also shows that many whites tended to underestimate white support for desegregation, that the tendency to attribute their own racial values to other whites varied with those values, and that, in general, white racial opinion was perceived to be more conservative than it actually was.