Sage Journals: Discover world-class research

Abstract

Pluralistic ignorance occurs when individuals misperceive a group norm and attempt to match the perceived—rather than actual—norm. Little is currently known about its role in the undergraduate classroom. The present research examined the pluralistic ignorance of studying behavior and its relationship with examination performance across four studies. Results suggested that students underestimate the amount of time their peers spend studying (Study 1), the extent of their estimation error is related to exam performance (Study 2), and that the relationship is mediated by a perceived lack of preparation (Study 3). Finally, a brief classroom intervention (Study 4) may be able to eliminate the pluralistic ignorance. Implications for the theory of pluralistic ignorance, and college teaching, are discussed.

Keywords

teaching studying examination pluralistic ignorance

Get full access to this article

View all access options for this article.

References

Allport

F. H.

(1924). Social psychology. Boston, MA: Houghton Mifflin.

Credé

Roch

S. G.

Kieszczynka

U. M.

(2010). Class attendance in college a meta-analytic review of the relationship of class attendance with grades and student characteristics. Review of Educational Research, 80, 272–295. doi:10.3102/0034654310362998

Curtis

R. D.

Roberts

S. P.

Mitchell

Seiler

(2012). Students are cheating less than they think: How erroneous assumptions affect academic dishonesty. Bethesda, MD: Lilly East Conference on College and University Teaching, (June, 2012).

Gose

(1998). More freshmen than ever appear disengaged from their studies, survey finds. The Chronicle of Higher Education, 45, A37.

Gurung

R. A.

(2005). How do students really study (and does it matter)? Education, 39, 323–340.

Heikkilä

Lonka

(2006). Studying in higher education: Students’ approaches to learning, self-regulation, and cognitive strategies. Studies in Higher Education, 31, 99–117. doi:10.1080/03075070500392433

Katz

Allport

F. H.

(1931). Student attitudes: A report of the Syracuse University research study. Syracuse, NY: Craftsman Press.

Krohn

G. A.

O’Connor

C. M.

(2005). Student effort and performance over the semester. The Journal of Economic Education, 36, 3–28. doi:10.3200/JECE.36.1.3-28

Lambert

T. A.

Kahn

A. S.

Apple

K. J.

(2003). Pluralistic ignorance and hooking up. Journal of Sex Research, 40, 129–133. doi:10.1080/00224490309552174

10.

McCormick

A. C.

(2011). It’s about time: What to make of reported declines in how much college students study. Liberal Education, 97, 30–39.

11.

Miller

D. T.

McFarland

(1987). Pluralistic ignorance: When similarity is interpreted a dissimilarity. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 53, 298–305. doi:10.1037/0022-3514.53.2.298

12.

Mokhtari

Reichard

C. A.

Gardner

(2009). The impact of internet and television use on the reading habits and practices of college students. Journal of Adolescent & Adult Literacy, 52, 609–619. doi:10.1598/JAAL.52.7.6

13.

Patterson

M. C.

(2017). A naturalistic investigation of media multitasking while studying and the effects on exam performance. Teaching of Psychology, 44, 51–57.

14.

Perkins

H. W.

Berkowitz

A. D.

(1986). Perceiving the community norms of alcohol use among students: Some research implications for campus alcohol education programming. Substance Use & Misuse, 21, 961–976. doi:10.3109/10826088609077249

15.

Preacher

K. J.

Hayes

A. F.

(2008). Asymptotic and resampling strategies for assessing and comparing indirect effects in multiple mediator models. Behavior Research Methods, 40, 879–891.

16.

Prentice

D. A.

Miller

D. T.

(1993). Pluralistic ignorance and alcohol use on campus: Some consequences of misperceiving the social norm. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 64, 243–256. doi:10.1037/0022-3514.64.2.243

17.

Pryor

J. H.

Hurtado

Saenz

V. B.

Santos

J. L.

Korn

W. S.

(2007). The American freshman: Forty year trends. Los Angeles, CA: Higher Education Research Institute.

18.

Schroeder