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Comment by btilly | Hacker News Reader

There was some fascinating research on this in the 90s. Apparently most Americans were more concerned about violence in movies than sex. But thought their neighbors were more concerned about sex than violence.

Our beliefs about other people's beliefs affect what issues we'll complain about in public. With the result that there is more care taken in our ratings to prevent children seeing sex than violence.

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Isn't there a name for this kind of fallacy? It's on the tip of my tongue. There was an anecdote (an example, rather) where each member of a family wants to go outdoors while assuming that everybody else will choose to remain indoors, and, out of being "considerate", everybody chooses to remain indoors. Comedy or tragedy ensues.

Edit: Found it: Pluralistic Ignorance. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pluralistic_ignorance. Uncited, but interesting statement: "...Pluralistic Ignorance can be caused by the structure of the underlying social network, not cognitive dissonance."

I thought the name for this situation was groupthinking : http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Groupthink

"Groupthink is a psychological phenomenon that occurs within a group of people, in which the desire for harmony or conformity in the group results in an incorrect or deviant decision-making outcome"

Also, Google, "Abilene Paradox" - sounds eerily similar...

I had never thought about it that way. We've found ourselves in a situation where we're more embarrassed to be caught watching something with nudity than violence because we made assumptions about other people that may be incorrect.

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