Pluralistic ignorance
Pluralistic ignorance can be contrasted with the false consensus effect. In pluralistic ignorance, people privately disdain but publicly support a norm (or a belief), while the false consensus effect causes people to wrongly assume that most people think like they do, while in reality most people do not think like they do (and express the disagreement openly). For instance, pluralistic ignorance may lead a student to drink alcohol excessively because she believes that everyone else does that, while in reality everyone else also wishes they could avoid binge drinking, but no one expresses that due to the fear of being ostracized. A false consensus for the same situation would mean that the student believes that most other people do not enjoy excessive drinking, while in fact most other people do enjoy that and openly express their opinion about it.
The Circle of Reason
Pluralistic rationalism is described in cultural media as "commitment to reason[ing], regardless of one's worldview," and by the society itself as "communal commitment to more consistently practice the basic methodological tenets of a reasoning lifestyle (reality's acceptance, assumption's denial, and emotion's mastery) irrespective of our theological, ethical, cultural or political worldviews." According to The Circle of Reason, pluralistic rationalism is practiced through encouraging not a particular worldview, but rather factualism, skepticism, and moderationism; and furthermore through discouraging their opposing practices of denialism, dogmatism, and emotionalism -- or "denials of reality, unquestioned assumptions (potentially false realities), and emotive arguments or actions (dissociation from reality)." Plurationalist practices include discouraging the verbal, printed or televised use of insults (which the group asserts is immoral because, as "ad hominem" argumentation, it seeks to "irrationally persuade by evoking emotionality.") Because plurationalists hold that "as a sapient being one's best tool to survive is one's ability to reason," they claim people's basic universalized moral imperative must then be "to consistently allow, and encourage, others to reason."