How Leadership Style Relates to Pluralistic Ignorance About Misinformation in the Workplace

Pluralistic ignorance—misperceiving others as more supportive of a norm or belief than oneself—can facilitate the spread of misinformation in hierarchical settings. In a cross-sectional study of employed adults (N = 402), we examined whether perceived leadership style is associated with such misperceptions when misinformation is shared by a supervisor. Participants rated how likely they themselves, and how likely their coworkers, would be to openly agree with, hide disagreement about, or genuinely believe fake-news headlines endorsed by their boss. Across all three outcomes, participants judged their coworkers to be more compliant with the boss’s misinformation than they reported themselves to be, consistent with a self–other discrepancy indicative of pluralistic ignorance. The size of this discrepancy varied with perceived leadership style: it was larger under authoritarian and laissez-faire leadership than under autonomy-supportive leadership, and laissez-faire leadership was associated with the largest discrepancies in perceived coworker compliance and concealment. Because the design is cross-sectional and based on hypothetical scenarios, these associations are correlational and several involve small effects. The findings are consistent with the possibility that leadership climates marked by uncertainty or low psychological safety distort perceived social norms surrounding misinformation, with potential implications for organizational communication and employee silence.