On September 1, 2005, President George W. Bush addressed ABC claiming, “I don’t think anybody anticipated the breach of the levees.” It is true that no one was able to predict that the levees would be breached, but the hurricane center warned that some of them in New Orleans could be overflowed. According to the National Hurricane Center Director Max Mayfield, there had been videoconference briefings to federal officials in Washington D.C., warning them about the possibility of the most horrible outcome of Hurricane Katrina. Also, two days before the storm hit, the hurricane center predicted that its strength, which was off by only about 10 mph. Even though there were warnings concerning Katrina, the people of New Orleans were not properly evacuated to safety, resulting in many deaths.
A term coined by Daniel Katz and Floyd Allport, pluralistic ignorance describes a situation in which everyone looks toward each other for what to do in a given situation and when not given an order of what to do, each person assumes that everything is good as it is. Sometimes this can be harmless, but other times it can be very dangerous. For example, if there was a smoke entering into a room, people would look to one another for guidance. Because they are all looking to others, however, they failure to express any concern and as a result, all of them would end up assuming that the nothing is wrong and that the smoke is harmless.
For in the case of the Hurricane Katrina disaster, pluralistic ignorance played a major role. Though the hurricane center warned how strong the winds were and how there were chances of the levees overflowing, no one heeded the warning not even federal officials. During times of crisis, people often look towards their leaders for guidance. Because the government failed to react properly, the people of New Orleans incorrectly concluded that Katrina was harmless and would not damage much.
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