Beloved Kilts, Crowd Mentality and the Acquiescence Assumed by Silence

I often get noticed when wearing a kilt. But that’s the point for a lung cancer advocacy website named Lung Cancer KilTs Research Cures. I get three basic reactions whilst kilted. Most often, no one notices because our attention is monopolized by our phones. Society just doesn’t notice. The second is spontaneous compliments and genuine excitement. I never knew how addicting compliments were.

The third group is interesting. Always alone. Always male. Happens more often than you’d imagine. They nervously approach and ask in hushed tones how I got the courage to wear a kilt. Though their usual term for courage rhymes with the word “balls”.

Why exactly do they not have the courage to wear a kilt? The kilt is associated with the Scottish Highlanders, brutal combat warriors who scream “freedom” if the movie Braveheart is to be believed. It’s a garment sporting a comically overqualified resume of manly men. I guess the fear of social rejection prevents them from wearing the most comfortable thing I own.

I imagine they mistakenly believe the group norm that states men can only wear pants. People fear the social cost of breaking ranks and being the first or only one. So, despite an obvious interest in doing something, they allow an imagined crowd consensus to shape their behavior around what they think society expects. Psychologists call this pluralistic ignorance.

Pluralistic ignorance describes what happens when people privately reject a norm but assume everyone else accepts it because nobody says otherwise. People will comply with rules they don’t believe in because breaking ranks feels harder than simply knuckling under and going along.

Wearing a kilt is a deliberately ridiculous example. These men in the third group appear to want to wear one but the fact they see few others do so creates the assumption that the group disapproves. The unwavering conformity to wearing trousers begets one more visual example of what men do not do.

If anticipated judgment can stop someone from doing something as insignificant as wearing an article of clothing, what else can it stop one from doing?

In a crowd of peers, does pluralistic ignorance make it hard to say “that isn’t funny” when someone is getting bullied? Or “this isn’t okay” when harmless mischief turns serious?

Or worse, not saying “she’s too impaired to consent.”

Wearing a kilt versus intervening when someone is being harmed are not morally equivalent. Not even close. But the parallel exists in the social mechanism where a person feels reluctant to depart from an assumed group norm. Especially in a group, where each member’s silence can be interpreted as approval when it may simply reflect a reluctance to buck the norm. 

The lawsuit in the Cornell Seven case alleges that seven fraternity members sexually assaulted an incapacitated woman while messages about what was happening circulated in a fraternity group chat reportedly containing 57 members. This case needs to be tried in court but what does it say about society if such degenerate behavior is normalized as “it happens?”

I want to believe that if each of the fifty-seven men were separated from the group and asked if they thought rape was acceptable or if they would ever rape someone, they’d all say no. We can’t know this and it’s frightening to think some may not. But it stands to reason that some, if not most of these men had to believe rape is wrong.

And yet.

Perhaps someone who knows rape is wrong rationalized the circumstances of the event.

“Someone else will intervene if it’s really bad”

“Maybe this isn’t what it looks like”

And most powerfully, “everyone else seems to be okay with this.”

Crowd mentality can affect not only whether someone speaks, but how they interpret what’s happening. The crowd becomes the problem when belonging feels conditional on going along and no one discovers whether others also secretly feel uncomfortable. That is when people won’t speak up because they anticipate disapproval from the crowd.

But an explanation isn’t an excuse. Why is it so hard to be the first to speak out in a group when the wrong is such an obvious wrong? Are we all just cowed into waiting for someone else to say it first? And how often is our silence mistaken for tacit acceptance of the group response?

Silence may feel neutral to the person keeping it but can look like agreement to everyone else.

In the airport, we’re told “if you see something, say something.” Because the unattended package we conveniently ignore could be the bomb that blows us up at 37,000 feet. The lesson is obvious. If you see sexual assault occurring, say something before it ruins lives.

We’re also told, don’t bring guns or bombs through security. It seems obvious to a society that doesn’t want to die at altitude. So, it should be as obvious to say don’t rape anyone.

We’re even told not to joke about bombs in the airport. By logical extension then, we shouldn’t make rape jokes either. Staying silent or laughing at a rape joke can look like you condone it, even if you privately reject it. Normalizing rape as part of the culture is terrifying because treating it as expected is part of the problem.

Society improves by normalizing the act of speaking up when something feels wrong. Treating objection as loyalty when it keeps everyone safe and out of trouble. Celebrating, not villainizing, the one with the courage to say what others may be thinking.   

Sometimes silence preserves a silly norm like men only wear pants. Sometimes silence makes criminal behavior look acceptable. 

Now I’m not saying every man should wear a kilt, though I guarantee they’d be happier. I am saying we should stop allowing the presumed opinions of other people to make our decisions for us. 

Sometimes that means having the courage to wear the thing you want to wear. Sometimes it means having the courage to be the first person to say, “No. This isn’t right.” The stakes are wildly different. But the courage to break ranks may come from a similar place.

Pluralistic ignorance hurts everyone when it convinces us to acquiesce to what we think the group believes instead of acting on what we know is right.

But seriously, try a kilt.