Locating The Rabbit Trail That Cuts To The Chase
The term social psychology is evidently one of those terms that came about as the result of an attempt to build a bridge; in this case, it was a bridge over the gap between psychology and sociology. Of course, consolidation resulted in diversity, and so the cycle goes.
Social Psychology is defined as "the scientific study of how people's thoughts, feelings, and behaviors are influenced by the actual, imagined, or implied presence of others."
But wait, there's more—or less.
"In social psychology, pluralistic ignorance is defined as a situation in which a majority of group members privately reject a norm, but incorrectly assume that most others accept it, and therefore go along with it. This is also described as "no one believes, but everyone thinks that everyone believes." In short, pluralistic ignorance is a bias about a social group, held by that social group."
Think about that description a minute.... and then apply it to current events in the news.
Hans Christian Andersen's fairy tale "The Emperor's New Clothes" highlights a case of pluralistic ignorance. In the story, a whole town fears speaking out on an obvious injustice out of fear that they would stand out believing nobody else could see what they saw. When two con artists come in to the Emperor's kingdom and convince him that they make the finest clothes in all of the land that can only be seen by anyone who was not stupid. The con artists continued to steal gold, silk and other precious items for their "unique creation". Out of fear for being seen as stupid, all of the emperor's men and towns people kept their mouths shut about the fact they could not see the outfit and the emperor was prancing around seemingly naked until finally a small child comes forth and says that the emperor is walking around naked. They believe that if an innocent child can see it, then they must all see it, and finally come forward and admit that the emperor has been tricked and that there was never an outfit being made.
In the late 1st century, the apostle John, while addressing congregations of Christians in what was then known as Asia Minor (now Turkey), in order to reassure those who had been disillusioned by false teachers, cut right to the chase when he said "Little children, keep yourselves from idols." (1Jo 5:21)
We, as citizens of these United States, are undergoing the task of hiring an employee to serve as Commander in Chief of a devoted corps of men and women who will go into harms way when so ordered. The task is not to be taken lightly, nor will it be accomplished by sitting on our a-- on election day. It's too late now to start thinking about the whole process of selection, but it's not too late to think about the outcome.
/fl