For their study, they had participants complete a questionnaire and after a few minutes, smoke started to pour into the room underneath a door in the back. In one of Darley and Latane's classic studies, they tried to recreate this phenomenon in the lab. The fact that several of the eyewitnesses in the Richmond case were laughing and taking photos with their cell phones suggests that they simply failed to realize they were witnessing a brutal rape and instead may have thought it was a prank. All the bystanders may look to each other to determine if they are witnessing a crime, and if no one reacts, then everyone will wrongly conclude that this is not an emergency and no one will step up and help. The same process can occur when we witness an ambiguous emergency situation.
So in this situation, my class is suffering from pluralistic ignorance because each one assumes they are the only one confused, when in fact all the students are confused and all of them are incorrectly concluding that they are the only one. But as a teacher, I have discovered that if one student is unsure about the material, odds are most of the students are. To avoid looking stupid, she may choose to keep her hand down and not ask me her question. If no one else looks puzzled, she will conclude that she is the only one in the room that didn't get the material. Before raising her hand, she will likely look around to room to see if any of her fellow students seem confused or have their hand up as well. Let's say that one of my students is confused about the class material I just covered and wants to ask me to clarify. For example, pluralistic ignorance explains why my undergraduate students often fail to ask questions in class.
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