Psychologists have a name for everything. For example, you know that feeling when only you seem to think the way you do, because everyone around you appears to think differently? So you pretend to fall in line. But then you find out that everyone else was doing the same thing. Despite appearances, it turns out you were in the majority all along – it just happened to be a very silent majority. Well, that phenomenon is referred to by psychologists as ‘pluralistic ignorance’. And since it is a real thing, I decided to play a bit of Climate Change Only Connect, to see what crops up if I search for a link between pluralistic ignorance and climate change.
This is what Google’s AI Overview told me:
Pluralistic ignorance, in the context of climate change, refers to the tendency for people to underestimate the prevalence of pro-climate attitudes and behaviors among their peers. Essentially, individuals may believe that fewer people share their concerns about climate change or support climate action than actually do. This misperception can lead to a reluctance to openly express climate concerns or engage in pro-climate behaviors, as people may fear social disapproval or judgment.
Which is, of course, very odd, because there seems to be no good reason why it could not have said instead:
Pluralistic ignorance, in the context of climate change, refers to the tendency for people to overestimate the prevalence of pro-climate attitudes and behaviors among their peers. Essentially, individuals may believe that more people hold concerns about climate change or support climate action than actually do. This misperception can lead to a reluctance to openly express climate scepticism or engage in sceptical behaviors, as people may fear social disapproval or judgment.
Both are, in principle, descriptions of a state of affairs that would meet the definition of pluralistic ignorance. The only difference is that there is no a priori reason to believe that climate-related pluralistic ignorance would operate in the manner described by Google’s AI, and yet there is every reason to believe in the alternative account offered by myself. The first (accepted) version lacks plausibility and, in my view, any convincing supporting evidence.1 The second version, on the other hand, whilst being dismissed by the AI overview, is entirely plausible and fits in perfectly with all expectations.
First of all, how could anyone in the UK gain the impression that there isn’t a great deal of concern for potential climate catastrophe, when the BBC, Westminster, all local government, the left-wing educated elite, nearly all journalists, the education system, the Church, an endless queue of ‘climate communication’ charities and NGOs, TV soaps, Ofcom and even Google’s AI are all telling you it is so. Every single facet of the ‘establishment’ is telling you the same story – we are all massively concerned about climate change — and there isn’t a day goes by without someone shoving the 97% consensus statistic down your throat. Pluralistic ignorance is supposed to shift behaviour towards perceived norms, so faced with such an information cascade, it should be the privately sceptical who are tempted to fall in line behind the crowd. And if you do happen to have climate change anywhere near the top of your list of concerns, it would be perverse of you to assume that it makes you part of a minority, even though that would be the truth.2
Secondly, one should consider the state’s overt and covert efforts to render the sceptical narrative an underground view, shared only in enforced or self-imposed secrecy.3 There is no corresponding effort to censor into silence those with ‘pro-climate attitudes’. There certainly hasn’t been any de-platforming (shadow or otherwise) or state-sponsored censorship, such as that aimed at the sceptical. And where is the evidence that the establishment has accused those who fear climate catastrophe of peddling ‘harmful misinformation’? On this basis alone, one would expect any silent majority to be comprised of cancelled sceptics rather than the climate concerned.
As for a fear of social disapproval or judgement, what evidence is there that the climate concerned have anything to fear from such disapproval? There’s none that I am aware of, apart from when Extinction Rebellion extremists seek to disrupt everyone’s lives. Contrast that with the sceptic being branded a ‘denier’, with obvious connotations. Or what about the huge number of academic studies4 that accuse sceptics of having various cognitive deficiencies, or the calls5 for contrarian views to be criminalised? If any self-censorship is to be expected for fear of social disapproval, it is clear that it will be the climate sceptic who has the greater incentive. Agreeing with climate policy has been framed as a question of morality. Those who are on the ‘right side’ by being privately in agreement are not going to be fearful of their supposed decency being exposed.
In short, the idea that pluralistic ignorance plays a significant role in the climate change debate is very plausible, but not in the way described by the Google AI Overview. And yet, for this overview to exist, there must be a huge body of work on the internet making the claim that the climate concerned suffer from pluralistic ignorance. But how much of that is wishful thinking? Funded surveys and PhD theses may say one thing, but common sense suggests something quite different. Besides which, relying purely on survey results is a mug’s game. Results that are not corroborated by hard data cannot be trusted. For example, the Institute for Strategic Dialogue noted, with heavy heart, that in the lead up to COP 26 a video posted by Spiked Online’s Brendan O’Neil attracted four times more views than a heavily promoted keynote speech given by People’s Advocate, Sir David Attenborough. There’s scant support in such statistics for the idea of a silent majority of climate policy supporters.
That there is a pluralistic ignorance operating amongst the climate concerned may be a highly dubious claim, but it is a useful one that comes with the establishment’s cascade of information – AI is just taking its position in that cascade. The idea of a silent majority of pluralistically ignorant supporters of climate change policy isn’t true, but it certainly suits those with a climate concerned agenda to push the idea that it is.6 If nothing else, it will add to the ceaseless drive to foster pluralistic ignorance amongst the hapless climate sceptics. Apparently there is a danger that, despite everything the establishment has said, you sceptics might still think you are in the majority; but then you are asked to take into account all those supposed silent concerned who vastly outnumber you! Yes, you are invited to believe that there are hordes of climate concerned out there but they are afraid to speak up for fear of social disapproval, so they either pretend to be deniers or run for cover when asked for an opinion! That would also explain why there is no mad rush for heat pumps. We all secretly want one but don’t want our neighbours to laugh at us.
Psychologists have a name for everything. They also have a professional bias that comes with the liberal, left-wing leanings that just about every one of them possesses. It is a bias that ensures that any insights they may have into human thinking and behaviour will be put to good use in furthering the cause of climate change activism. The implausible but tendentious connection they make between pluralistic ignorance and climate change is just one of many examples of such a bias put into practice. The bias can also be seen in a profession that can tell you every failure of critical thinking that lies behind climate change scepticism, but has absolutely nothing to say regarding how failures in critical thinking could result in the acceptance of an unsafe consensus. It is a bias that they can’t see because they have their own bias blind spot. They are experts at seeing bias in others but are completely clueless when it comes to self-examination. I have nothing against psychologists as such, but I think I have said it before, the day that they decided as a profession to jump aboard the climate activist juggernaut was a sad day for us all.
Footnotes:
[1] I’ll leave my readers to decide for themselves whether this paper cited by the Google AI Overview is in any respect convincing when it says, “This may be partly due to the large media exposure of the views and opinions of climate contrarians, and partly due to a misleading information environment where individuals infer from the carbon‐intensive behavior of others that most people do not really care about climate change.”
[2] Based upon the level of media coverage, climate change is in the top three of public concerns within the UK. But when members of the public are asked to rank their personal concerns, climate change comes nowhere near the top, with health care, crime, the economy, immigration and national defence dominating (ref. YouGov UK data).
[3] I refer here, for example, to the work of the Government’s Counter-Disinformation Unit (CDU) and Rapid Response Unit (RRU). According to the government’s own ‘fact sheet’, there is nothing at all sinister about what they do. Call me a cynic, but the very fact that they protest innocence raises suspicions. Certainly, Big Brother Watch is unimpressed.
[4] See this meta study, to get some feel for the scale of the industry.
[5] There is a recent UN General Assembly Report that, in paragraph 73, recommends: “Criminalize misinformation and misrepresentation (greenwashing) by the fossil fuel industry…”
[6] Clearly, Rebecca Willis, adviser to the UK’s Climate Change Committee, sees the political advantage in pushing the idea of a silent majority wanting more action. In a recent radio interview she said: “Yeah, the bottom line is this: politicians massively underestimate public support for climate action. So, there’s a long-running survey asking how concerned people are about climate change.” It isn’t clear to what survey she is referring, but there are plenty of candidates. Take, for example, the People’s Climate Vote 2024, as seized upon by the Guardian. But even that survey conceded that only 25% who felt the need to tackle climate change were prepared to say that they were dissatisfied with their government’s performance (ref. Question 6: How well is your country addressing climate change?). So no, there isn’t a massive majority out there silently craving a stronger push for Net Zero.
Climate Scepticism 
Thank you John, for expressing far more clearly than I could have done, this very real truth about the misinformation around the idea that there is a silent majority of climate-concerned citizens. You have covered it so thoroughly that there really isn’t much for me to add.
It seems incredible that people like Rebecca Willis can in all seriousness believe that the majority of people are in agreement with her and her colleagues at the Climate Change Committee, but that they keep quiet about it. Why would you keep quiet about it? As you point out, the entire establishment never shuts up about climate change, and does its best to demonise anyone who isn’t on board with the project. I can’t switch on BBC Radio 4 without being lectured about climate change within a matter of minutes of switching on. I can’t look at the BBC website without finding a climate alarmism story as one of the main features (today, the Met Office report was the main feature).
I do wonder why people such as Rebecca Willis think as they do about this supposed silent majority. Is it because they can’t believe people could really be increasingly hostile to net zero and unconcerned about climate change (or, at least, much less concerned about it than about matters that directly impact on their day to day lives, such as the cost of living)? Is it because they see these claims as a useful way of proselytising for a cause that is clearly in trouble, and thus encouraging people to be more vocal about it? I just don’t know. We live in strange times.
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Thank you Mark – and John. It’s clear that, unsurprisingly, Mad Ed shares Rebecca Willis’s belief. In the Guardian article this morning to which I referred on ‘The Case Against’ thread he is quoted as saying this:
I suggest this is perhaps a good example of the phenomenon so clearly explained by John. Or maybe Ed goes even further than Rebecca Willis and is sure that public support for his position is open and widespread – far more than the view of a silent majority.
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It’s hugely ironic that Miliband describes people who disagree with him as extremists and ideologues. Presumably he doesn’t look in the mirror very often. He’s a classic example of the phenomenon John describes when discussing psychologists.
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Mark,
Psychologists will tell you that pluralistic ignorance is supposed to shift behaviour towards perceived norms. The same psychologists will warn you that an ‘informational cascade’ works because it creates a perceived norm. Given the obvious informational cascade that has fully taken hold of the establishment, these psychologist should therefore be able to confidently predict that there is no pluralistic ignorance amongst those with ‘pro-climate attitudes’. So when they set up studies to look for such a pluralistic ignorance and found it, they should have been shocked. But of course, they weren’t. One after another, they breathlessly reported their profoundly counter-intuitive results, never feeling the need to explain how they could possibly have occurred. These psychologist know all about a cognitive bias called ‘experimenter bias’:
Experimenter Bias – The Behavioral Scientist
This should have been their obvious explanation. But it wasn’t, and never will be.
Robin,
Yes, I read your comment shortly before posting my article. I could see how they work well together. Milliband is just riding the wave of the informational cascade and I’m afraid he is beyond redemption.
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Don’t forget the trickery to get the desired results from those surveys.
https://rclutz.com/2018/07/17/the-art-of-rigging-climate-polls/
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Ron,
Indeed. I can think of no better ‘scientific’ instrument by which to enable experimenter bias than a survey.
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It seems to me that those suffering inaction caused by pluralistic ignorance are those who will bring down democracies. Politicians, or those whose incomes are determined by repeated fearmongering, are modern-day school playground bullies. They railroad their desires masquerading under obscene and unproven cataclysmic predictions, and are walking in the footsteps of Goebbels. He, of course, understood that if one wanted people to believe something untrue, then one has to make the lie so momentous that no one would doubt it.
Some individuals are handicapped by coming face to face with such monstrous prophecies they cannot believe they are not true. But frankly, no one alive today should possibly believe anything spewed by governments, or globalist monstrosities like the UN, EO or WEF. Especially when those same bodies hijack the media and suppress, or eliminate, opposing views.
Majorities neither have the right to be considered correct, nor to disrespect those who oppose, ostensibly, majority beliefs. This is especially so, when the alleged minority remain silent despite being unconvinced by the unproven and absurd rhetoric of the apparent majority. Stand up !!
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In the interests of balance, I should have pointed out in my article that the establishment’s informational cascade includes the idea that Big Oil is spreading misinformation that is turning people’s heads. Some of the faithful may be worried just how successful they have been and conclude that they are now outnumbered by sceptics in the thrall of ‘bad actors’. So pluralistic ignorance may actually be a real thing amongst the climate concerned, in as much as they may like to think they are surrounded by idiots.
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jchr12,
Majorities neither have the right to be considered correct, nor to disrespect those who oppose, ostensibly, majority beliefs. This is especially so, when the alleged minority remain silent despite being unconvinced by the unproven and absurd rhetoric of the apparent majority. Stand up !!
The point here is that the psychologists believe that a vociferous minority has succeeded in persuading the majority that they are outnumbered. How they are supposed to have achieved that, despite extensive institutionalized opposition is the mystery. But you are right, the best way of puncturing through pluralistic ignorance is to be prepared to stand up and declare that the emperor is naked.
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To further illustrate how the phenomenon of climate-related pluralistic ignorance can get distorted when seen through a psychologist’s eyes, I offer you this from our old friend, Stephan Lewandowsky:
The Loud Fringe: Pluralistic Ignorance and Democracy
https://www.shapingtomorrowsworld.org/lewandowskypluraligno.html
The paper includes a figure comparing actual attitudes to perceived attitudes. The annotation reads:
Did you see the sleight of hand he pulled there? What he fails to point out is that when one adds the numbers denying that climate change is taking place to those that agree that it is but say it is natural variation:
a) The figure exceeds those who believe in man-made climate change. So there is no silent majority of climate change believers.
b) The figure is roughly the same whether it is the actual number or the perceived number. This is because whilst the number denying any change is overestimated, the number accepting change but claiming it is natural variation is correspondingly underestimated. So all this means is that the concept of climate change scepticism, as conceived by many people, is rather outdated. This has nothing at all to do with pluralistic ignorance. It’s just ignorance.
Furthermore, although the value of climate change believers is indeed underestimated, it is only because people think there are more undecided people out there than there actually are. That’s not quite what is meant by pluralistic ignorance.
Lewandowsky goes on to say:
A strange conclusion to draw when referring to an opinion (failure to agree with man-made climate change) which his own data clearly shows is neither in a minority nor mis-calibrated.
This is exactly what I mean by people seeing what they want to see in the data. I should be shocked, but this is Lewandowsky.
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Pink Freud.
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I’ve been reading again the article by Stephan Lewandowsky on the subject of pluralistic ignorance, and the more I read the more I am shocked.
The first, and most striking problem is that he presents a histogram that clearly shows that only about 44% of Australians believe that there has been climate change and that it is human caused. However, in the text he says:
Since when has 44% been a majority? This beggars belief. Is he even numerate?
Furthermore, it is worth mentioning that the pluralistic ignorance within this group is really rather small, since they estimate the size of their own group to be about 40% compared to the reality of 44%. Such pluralistic ignorance is hardly worth mentioning. It’s even less than the pluralistic ignorance shown by those who believe that the climate change is natural (35% compared with the true figure of 44%). Why is this not mentioned in the text? What explanation would he be able to offer?
The second major problem is that Lewandowsky clearly doesn’t even understand what pluralistic ignorance is. He says:
But in reality it is a term that refers specifically to an underestimation of the popularity of one’s own views. Because he doesn’t understand this he thinks the most relevant issue to mention in an article on pluralistic ignorance is the overestimation from the group that denies that the climate is changing at all. This may be a striking observation worthy of an explanation, but it certainly is not an example of pluralistic ignorance! It is called the false consensus effect. Even I know that. Psychology is supposed to be his field. What is he playing at?
Just to round things off, he totally fails to point out that the other group that massively overestimates its own size is the one that admits to simply not knowing (the ‘don’t know’ group). He is full of explanations for why the ‘denier’ group thinks itself to be much larger than it is, but he needs to also address the don’t knows and why they also think themselves to be in a much larger group than they are. He doesn’t do so because he doesn’t actually have a clue. Well let me help him out. The thing that the climate change denier group and the don’t know group have in common is that they are both very small in size. There is a human tendency to think we are normal, and so those who are further away from the norm will tend to mis-calibrate their group size to a greater extent. This is just a case of regression to the mean – a very well-known statistical effect. Why am I not surprised that Lewandowsky has failed to allow for this obvious explanation?
I’m sorely tempted to write an article pointing out just how horrendous this piece of work is.
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P.S. I should also point out that when Lewandowsky refers to those who don’t believe the climate is changing as ‘flat earthers’ he achieves a new low.
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