- Sep 13, 2002
- 97,935
- 204,251
- 113
This data absolutely blew my mind. Good Lort are tons of Americans absolute dimbulbs.
YouGov asked a series of questions on “What percentage of Americans do you think are [fill in the blank]?” With the [blank] being all sorts of qualities: black, gay, Christian, left-handed, own a passport, etc.
The results were hilarious. Here are some of the percentages that Americans (on average) think their fellow citizens are:
Not to be crass, but if a third of the population is gay/lesbian then where are all the kids coming from?
If a quarter of the country is Muslim and a third is Jewish, then mosques plus synagogues would outnumber churches. Does anyone see more mosques and synagogues than churches as they drive around?
If 40 percent of the country is black then wouldn’t there be a lot more black people in Congress? I mean, there have only been 12 African-American senators ever.
You see what I mean: These perceptions do not square with any version of observable reality. Here the numbers as they actually exist in the real world:
f you go down the list of characteristics YouGov asked people abut, you see a persistent mistake in one direction: Americans vastly overestimate the numbers of people in minority groups. And by “minority groups” I’m not just talking about racial, ethnic, and sexual minorities. They wildly overestimate all kinds of minorities.
For instance, in addition to believing that 30 percent of the country lives in NYC, the average American thinks that 30 percent of the country lives in Texas and 32 percent lives in California.²
People think that 20 percent of the country makes $1 million (or more) per year (real number: less than 1 percent); that 54 percent of the country owns guns (real number: 32 percent); that 40 percent of the country served in the military (real number: 6 percent); and that 30 percent of the country is vegetarian (real number: 5 percent).
There’s something interesting going on here that speaks to a particularly American cognitive bias.
You might think that a normal bias would be to look around, see what is common in your experience, and extrapolate to believe that this is also for true of the rest of the world. Instead, we have the opposite.
People see very few of these characteristics in their everyday lives—and then decide that the rest of the world must be full of these minority groups they rarely encounter.
For someone living in a middle-class suburb of Cleveland, how many trans people, or Muslims, or millionaires do they meet on a daily basis? I’m guessing, just based on statistics, that the answer approaches zero.
But this average person takes the absence of those minority groups in their life and assumes that the rest of the country is chockablock with them.
That is a strange kind of bias. But wait—there’s more!
As YouGov kept going they found that people generally underestimate the size of majority populations. Here’s what they found on majority characteristics, where the number in blue is the percentage that people think exists and the number in red is the percentage that actually exists.
I would like to propose that this peculiar perception bias is indicative of something deep in the American psyche.
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Often The Other is based on race or ethnicity. Sometimes on wealth. Sometimes it’s about class.
These perception gaps suggest that Americans in the majority are deeply paranoid about their own position relative to The Other. They believe that people who are nothing like them make up some massive but invisible bloc, while the people who are very much like them—who they see every day at the store and in school—are more rare than they wish.
This distorted perception leads people in majorities to a combative, oppositional politics. They worry about being displaced by minorities they rarely encounter but fear are lurking somewhere, out there, in great masses.
Richard Hofstadter wrote about the paranoid style in American politics in 1964 and he was looking at both the contemporary and the historical. Developments since then have mostly confirmed his thesis. I think we can take it as read that paranoia is an important component of American social and political life.
And if this is the case, then I would say that our bizarre perception bias is both symptom and cause. People are paranoid about The Other, which is why they believe that hordes of The Other must exist. And the belief that their own majority group is small while The Other is large feeds the underlying paranoia.
I’m not sure how democracy is supposed to work with a population that is this paranoid, confused, and oblivious to reality.
Maybe you have some ideas. If so, please discuss them—and our cognitive bias—in the comments.
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1. Perceptions
Yesterday Jemele Hill recirculated a study YouGov did in 2022 about the gaps between people’s perceptions and reality.YouGov asked a series of questions on “What percentage of Americans do you think are [fill in the blank]?” With the [blank] being all sorts of qualities: black, gay, Christian, left-handed, own a passport, etc.
The results were hilarious. Here are some of the percentages that Americans (on average) think their fellow citizens are:
- Transgender: 21 percent
- Muslim: 27 percent
- Jewish: 30 percent
- Black: 41 percent
- Live in New York City: 30 percent
- Gay or lesbian: 30 percent
Not to be crass, but if a third of the population is gay/lesbian then where are all the kids coming from?
If a quarter of the country is Muslim and a third is Jewish, then mosques plus synagogues would outnumber churches. Does anyone see more mosques and synagogues than churches as they drive around?
If 40 percent of the country is black then wouldn’t there be a lot more black people in Congress? I mean, there have only been 12 African-American senators ever.
You see what I mean: These perceptions do not square with any version of observable reality. Here the numbers as they actually exist in the real world:
- Transgender: 1 percent
- Muslim: 1 percent
- Jewish: 2 percent
- Black: 12 percent
- Live in New York City: 2 percent¹
- Gay or lesbian: 3 percent
f you go down the list of characteristics YouGov asked people abut, you see a persistent mistake in one direction: Americans vastly overestimate the numbers of people in minority groups. And by “minority groups” I’m not just talking about racial, ethnic, and sexual minorities. They wildly overestimate all kinds of minorities.
For instance, in addition to believing that 30 percent of the country lives in NYC, the average American thinks that 30 percent of the country lives in Texas and 32 percent lives in California.²
People think that 20 percent of the country makes $1 million (or more) per year (real number: less than 1 percent); that 54 percent of the country owns guns (real number: 32 percent); that 40 percent of the country served in the military (real number: 6 percent); and that 30 percent of the country is vegetarian (real number: 5 percent).
There’s something interesting going on here that speaks to a particularly American cognitive bias.
You might think that a normal bias would be to look around, see what is common in your experience, and extrapolate to believe that this is also for true of the rest of the world. Instead, we have the opposite.
People see very few of these characteristics in their everyday lives—and then decide that the rest of the world must be full of these minority groups they rarely encounter.
For someone living in a middle-class suburb of Cleveland, how many trans people, or Muslims, or millionaires do they meet on a daily basis? I’m guessing, just based on statistics, that the answer approaches zero.
But this average person takes the absence of those minority groups in their life and assumes that the rest of the country is chockablock with them.
That is a strange kind of bias. But wait—there’s more!
As YouGov kept going they found that people generally underestimate the size of majority populations. Here’s what they found on majority characteristics, where the number in blue is the percentage that people think exists and the number in red is the percentage that actually exists.
 |
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2. Paranoia
American politics has long been driven by concerns about The Other.Often The Other is based on race or ethnicity. Sometimes on wealth. Sometimes it’s about class.
These perception gaps suggest that Americans in the majority are deeply paranoid about their own position relative to The Other. They believe that people who are nothing like them make up some massive but invisible bloc, while the people who are very much like them—who they see every day at the store and in school—are more rare than they wish.
This distorted perception leads people in majorities to a combative, oppositional politics. They worry about being displaced by minorities they rarely encounter but fear are lurking somewhere, out there, in great masses.
Richard Hofstadter wrote about the paranoid style in American politics in 1964 and he was looking at both the contemporary and the historical. Developments since then have mostly confirmed his thesis. I think we can take it as read that paranoia is an important component of American social and political life.
And if this is the case, then I would say that our bizarre perception bias is both symptom and cause. People are paranoid about The Other, which is why they believe that hordes of The Other must exist. And the belief that their own majority group is small while The Other is large feeds the underlying paranoia.
I’m not sure how democracy is supposed to work with a population that is this paranoid, confused, and oblivious to reality.
Maybe you have some ideas. If so, please discuss them—and our cognitive bias—in the comments.
