Pluralistic ignorance
In social psychology, pluralistic ignorance is a situation in which a majority of group members privately reject a norm, but go along with it because they incorrectly assume that most others accept it. This is also described as "no one believes, but everyone thinks that everyone believes". In short, pluralistic ignorance is a bias about a social group, held by the members of that social group.
Sociology of scientific ignorance
In correspondence with knowledge mobilization, which refers to moving available knowledge into use, a concept of 'ignorance mobilization' has been introduced. "Ignorance mobilization can be understood as the use of
ignorance towards the achievement of goals."
This concept also makes a distinction between two types of ignorance: "active" non-knowledge is ignorance that is intentionally or unintentionally taken into account within science; "latent" non-knowledge is ignorance that is not taken into account. The latter more resembles the old view of ignorance, as lack of knowledge. Ignorance mobilization can be said to aim to change latent non-knowledge into active non-knowledge, thereby making it useful for further research.