Beliefs and meanings held by individuals and groups are supported by, and embedded in, sociocultural institutions and processes.
The term was coined by Peter L. Berger, who says he draws his meaning of it from the ideas of Karl Marx, G. H. Mead, and Alfred Schutz.
[1] For Berger, the relation between plausibility structure and social "world" is dialectical, the one supporting the other which, in turn, can react back upon the first.
"[3] Critics have argued that Berger pays too much attention to discourse analysis and not enough to the institutional frameworks that continue to support religious belief.
[4] Berger may also underestimate the role of self-selected reference groups in maintaining one's plausibility structures,[5] as well as the erosion of the modernist trend of secularization that took place with postmodernism.