Pluralistic Ignorance

 

Cashew tree in love with my house

Black ants laid siege to my house. Tiny, almost atomic, creatures. Suddenly they were there wherever I looked. In endless lines they marched like devoted soldiers conquering an enemy’s territory. I had no choice but raise jingoistic slogans and pull out some AK-47s. I drew Lakshman Rekhas all over with Hit chalk. I sprayed Hit Lime Fresh wherever Maggie permitted me. [She detests the smell of chemicals.] Hoards of black specks stared at me soon from the floor. Dead ants.

Within hours of my cleaning up the entire place, new lines of ants appeared exactly in the same old places. The same infinite black lines moving like endless trains. Finally I traced their origins to two sources: my beloved cashew tree in front of the house and the ivy gourd behind. The ants were descending on to the walls of my house from these. I chopped off the cashew branches that touched my roof. I cut off the ivy gourd which had become too old to produce anything except black ants.

The siege came to an end. Well, almost. The ants which were there already inside the house still keep moving in circles seeking moksha through Hit.

The ants never learn the most essential lesson: that they don’t belong in some places.

Ants are programmed to follow each other’s pheromone trails, I learnt soon. Sometimes one of these atomic creatures will lose the trail and get into a viciously circular motion. And a whole lot of ants will follow it, moving in an endless circle, moving on until they succumb to exhaustion and lack of food and die. They are very devoted to the leader anyway. Very patriotic, should I say?

Some human beings aren’t very different from these ants. Once Dan Ariely, a psychologist at Duke University, lectured to a group of students on his field of behavioural economics. He started with a definition that sounded very technical, full of jargon. Actually the definition made no sense at all. The psychologist had just cobbled together a series of computer-generated random words and sentences to produce gibberish about ‘dialectic enigmatic theory’ and ‘neodeconstructive rationalism’.

The scholarly students listened with rapt attention. Nobody laughed. Nobody raised a hand to ask a doubt. Nobody frowned.

“And this brings us to the big question,” Ariely said dramatically. “Why has no one asked me what the @#$% I’m talking about?”

That day Ariely’s listeners, scholarly students of a university, learnt about pluralistic ignorance.

Eminent psychologist Floyd Allport introduced the concept of pluralistic ignorance. It refers to the feeling that one’s beliefs or attitudes are not shared by others when they actually are. Each student in Ariely’s lecture knew that he/she didn’t understand a thing about dialectical enigmatic theory and neodeconstructive rationalism. But what happens? Each one watches the others with a sidelong look. Every single student is sitting with rapt attention. Wow! This must be fantastic stuff. Only I’m a dunce here, I don’t understand it. So let me be quiet. I pretend that I understand what’ happening. Dialectical enigmatism suddenly becomes my beloved idea.

Nationalism can become such a beloved idea. Apathy can. Selfishness can become the noblest virtue. One ant that missed the trail can lead a whole army of ants in an endless vicious cycle and travel blissfully to their death.

Please note this, however. The ants are not conscious of their activity. The human beings in pluralistic ignorance are. But the latter choose to ignore their awareness. Does that make them any better than the ignorant ants? Is awareness that does not effect the necessary change in one’s thinking, attitudes, or action of any use?

xxx