LogiCIC/LIRa Session on April 24: Jens Ulrik Hansen (ILLC)

On April 24, Jens Ulrik Hansen, who is currently visiting ILLC, will give a talk on Pluralistic ignorance: Unveiling logical, rational, and epistemic components of an error phenomenon from social psychology. This talk is jointly organized by the LogiCIC Project and LIRa.

The talk will take place in Science Park 904, Room A1.04, at the usual time: 3.p.m..

Abstract:
Pluralistic ignorance in a phenomenon widely discussed in social psychology and related fields. In the literature, it is often portrayed as a cognitive error of social comparison, where individuals privately hold an opinion but mistakenly believe that others hold the opposite opinion. In most cases, people involved in pluralistic ignorance tend to act contrary to their private beliefs, but fail to realize that others may act insincere as well. Thus, pluralistic ignorance seems like a fail of rationality. However, I claim, there can be substantial amount of logic and epistemic rationality to pluralistic ignorance. Pluralistic ignorance may even arise among perfectly rational agents. In this talk, I will explicate the concept of pluralistic ignorance and explain why I claim that it can arise among rational agents. Furthermore, I will discuss initial attempts to use formal tools such as Dynamic Epistemic Logic (and maybe also game theory) to model the epistemic components of pluralistic ignorance.