Pluralistic ignorance and professional standards: underestimating professionalism of our peers in public relations

Abstract

Two-hundred-fifty-one responses to a battery of 45 professional standard items indicate that public relations professionals randomly surveyed from across the nation tend to underestimate the current state of professional standards in the field. This state of affairs, described in coorientation theory as pluralistic ignorance, suggests that our field may actually hold higher standards and greater confidence in standards than we commonly attribute to our peers. Following the third-person effect, respondents tended to view themselves as better able to withstand pressures and outdated thinking than their peers. In fact, practitioners held their peers in comparatively low esteem, viewing others collectively as somewhat naive, unprofessional and unenlightened in comparison to their own personal self-images. While female practitioners are generally less sanguine about gender and racial equity in public relations, women tend to be more optimistic about standards for ethics and professional functions such as planning and research. Women also tended to be less harsh in their ratings of peer professionalism, while also attributing lower values to others. This study, conducted under the auspices of the Yarbrough Public Relations Laboratory, is a followup to preliminary results of the survey of practitioners reported in the article titled “Developing Standards of Professional Performance in Public Relations” published in Public Relations Review in 1996. Preliminary results of a followup survey of educators was reported in the article “Professional Standards in Public Relations: A Survey of Educators” published in Public Relations Review in 1997. All three authors are with the Department of Advertising/Public Relations, Henry W. Grady College of Journalism and Mass Communication, University of Georgia, Athens. Lynne M. Sallot, APR, Fellow PRSA, is Assistant Professor. Glen T. Cameron is Associate Professor and Director of Research, James M. Cox, Jr. Institute for Newspaper Management Studies. Ruth Ann Weaver Lariscy is Associate Professor.