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.
Holly Martin Smith
Smith explored how to assess an agent's degree of credit or blameworthiness for an action when the agent acts from a mixture of good and bad motives. She worked on the question of whether an agent is blameworthy for a wrongful act done in culpable ignorance. Her most noted paper is “Culpable Ignorance,” which was named by "The Philosopher’s Annual" as one of the ten best articles in 1983. It analysed in detail the terms of the debate between those who argue that a person is blameworthy for an action performed in culpable ignorance, versus those who hold that while a person is blameworthy for the initial dereliction of failing to acquire information, that does not taint a subsequent action, done in culpable ignorance, that is itself done from acceptable motives.