Americans overestimate the size of minority groups and underestimate the size of most majority groups
Source: https://today.yougov.com/politics/articles/41556-americans-misestimate-small-subgroups-population
........ Honestly, this isn't too surprising with how saturated the media is with minority groups. Almost every show I see on various streaming products ends up having heavy LGBTQ+ plots rammed in, trans characters showin up, always a multicultural combo of characters and fewer and fewer generic CIS white people. When the media is constantly blasting you with minorities and minority issues, in a highly biased way, it's totally not surprising at all that people would start thinking they're a way bigger slice of the population.
Like someone once pointed out that there were more airplane pilots in North America than trans people. So imagine if every TV show you watched, suddenly had an airplane pilot show up and talk about airplanes a bunch, had whole episodes dedicated to his occupational trauma, regardless of what the main plot of the show may be. That would be more representative of the general public, than having trans people in every fucking show going on about trans trauma.
its called corporate virtue signalling, or rainbow capitalism, alot of people complained how it ruins shows, and i do agree, its a distraction from poor writing and plots.
I agree. Undoubtedly someone is going to get very mad with your opinion and intentionally miss the point. Representation is fine. Shoehorning a specific minority into every plot line then beating the viewer over the head with the most juvenile and hamfisted messaging imaginable isn't helping anyone. It just makes for bad content. We have many examples of women and minorities in movies and shows written well for decades. It's only quite recently that writers appear to value representation and ideological messaging over the story, and I think for that they deserve criticism.
Every show and movie has become a preachy soapbox. It's fucking tiring and you just want to turn it off because you suddenly get slapped in the face with irrelevant "causes" instead of just zoning out and being entertained. The suspension of disbelief gets exhausted at yet another 110lb hottie thrashing a 6'-4 steroid monster that could backhand her across the room in real life.
You're right! They should bring back Wings!
WTH, Americans think that 30% of the country lives in NYC?
They think 21% are transgender too.... A lot of propaganda has gone through these people.
“Transvestigation” is fucking insane and there are a lot of people who are convinced that many celebrities are secretly trans.
I think it mostly started with disgusting conspiracies about Michelle Obama (they literally believe that Sasha and Malia were kidnapped, even have specific missing children they think they are). Alex Jones and his ilk think Michelle was born Michael.
This was a thing that developed I think late in his presidency, then it expanded to several other figures. My favorite is Donald Glover as a trans man - I’ll gladly welcome Childish Gambino into my community.
It’s a serious “Q anon” type mentally ill worldview.
By the looks of it, it's 30% to NYC, 30% to Texas, and 30% to California. So 10% for literally everywhere else in the US. That's gotta be close, right?
I'd totally get that for polling people outside of North America. It's just shocking to see it from people who have probably been to NYC or at least another major metro area -- which would instantly falsify a 30% number for NYC.
Sitcoms fucked us up
I’m guessing these same people do know roughly the total population of the US. And are bad at math in general. That would mean 100 million people live in NYC.
It's shocking how bad normal people are with basic math
The other ~60% live in California and Texas respectively 😆
Well, that is pretty much how television seems to think things are...
I always thought it was weird how in so many shows that are targeted to a nationwide audience how often they seem to just assume some specific subway thing in NYC is something that their audience will instantly get and relate to.
They also believe they are a majority of the world population, which is incredibly obvious if you spend any time online (that theu believe that, not that they are that). Several times when I've said that the US population is 3% of the world population I've gotten replies saying that can't be true or that I and dumb for believing obviously false facts or obvious anti-American propaganda... Absolutely pathetic.
The way I read this graph is that the upper portion are people they want to oppress and the lower portion are people that they preserve is oppressing them.
They think almost 25% of people are trans?? Jesus fucking christ
It explains so much when it's played up so heavily in talk shows, despite the reality always having been very minor. Honestly I didn't realize me being gay was that much of a minority either. I kind of wish ADHD had been one in the list; if I remember the reality is like no more than 3-5% of the population but people assume it's over diagnosed as hell and like...not really. Maybe when there was the initial "rush" of sorts for parents during the 90's because of it seeming to help "unruly" kids, often just meaning imaginative or creative. In my case my parents didn't even know until my kindergarten teacher told them I should get evaluated, and yep.
neurodivergence is seeing a boom in diagnoses because we now actually fucking diagnose neurodivergence instead of going "yeah the kid's a retard dump em in the bin"
Or vice versa, people have that perception because the media and social networks fixate on it so much.
Frequently meaning well, but the attempt to be very inclusive creates for some crazy unrealisitc representations.
Everyone here talking about the minority groups when I think the real story is people thinking 1/5 Americans are making $1M/yr.
What are these people smoking? I need some.
People think 30% of the U.S population lives in New York?
That's what actually brought me to the comments. The fuck? OK, so now NYC pop is about 10mil, non-NYC NY is about 10 mil, and non-NYC NYC metro is about 10 mil. How do you get even 30 mil to represent 30% of 350mil? Confuse it with the Iranian population of 92mil? And 30% is the average of the responses!
3% Atheists is such a bullshit number. There is a famous Pew poll, where they asked people two questions side by side, "are you an atheist" and "do you believe in any god", and 4% answered no to the first one and something like 20% answered no to the second one.
I think "atheist" carries the connotations of being irreligeous, not just not believing in any gods. So some people may not believe in any gods, but maybe they do have some kind of spirituality, or believe in ghosts or something. Buddhism as a religion doesn't mandate God-belief, though some schools do interact with devas. I'm unsure if any other religions don't require gods to work, but even if they exist, I imagine they and Buddhists, despite not believing in any gods, will be very hesitant to describe themselves as "atheist."
i'd say you can be atheist and believe in ghosts/spirits, that's pretty different from divine beings
the core thing about divinity is power, power to do things or power to have done things in the past or future. spirits and ghosts generally have power comparable to living people, so the lack of obvious evidence for their existence isn't anywhere near as big of an issue as with deities capable of altering the fabric of reality.
it's not that incongrous that we'd fail to notice things that can barely interact with us, but an explicitly omnipotent and omniscient god? they can damn well write "hey ho here i am!" in the clouds.
According to the same research, 1% of US adults are Buddhist, and they fall in a separate cathegory.
All the polls are weird, and very much depending on how you ask the question and how you slice the data.
But you're right, the word atheist carries some baggage in a christian nationalist country, but that was kind of almost my point. So many people are afraid of the word atheist, but are "not religious, don't believe in any gods, don't follow any practices", which is, actual textbook definition of the word.
Sounds about right, there's a difference between atheism and agnosticism, which is what the 2nd question is asking.
This isn't the difference. Agnosticism postulates that knowing if any god exist is categorically unanswerable. The matter of your personal believe is a parallel question entirely. "We cannot be sure, but I personally don't believe any gods" makes an atheist, but so does "There is absolutely no evidence for any gods so I don't believe any". "We cannot be sure, but I personally believe in Sobek, may his sperm be neverending" makes a theist.
4% answered no to the first one and something like 20% answered no to the second one.
Where did the other 76% go?
It's an overlapping numbers from different questioneers. A bunch people for example are christians who never been to church and don't believe in a christian god.
Okay but Americans are numerically illiterate.
Americans believe a single city (New York) represents 30% of the American population?
Forget that. They think one out of their first 3 friends they have is gay. Assuming they're straight that means 50% of their friends are gay. Fuck that means they think 25% of their first 4 friends are trans.
Math is not their strong point apparently
TBF if you join random chat groups to meet people you might find abkut that proportion, but not roaming the parks and streets, no.
Another third lives in all of Texas?
I was kind of curious if this was close to true in any countries with higher urban population densities and the first one I checked was Japan since it has a rural depopulation issue and Tokyo is a pretty populous city and… it was right on the money. Japan’s pop is ~124 million and Tokyo’s is ~ 37 million. So roughly 30% of Japan’s population lives in one city/metro area. Not that this means anything for US population distribution, but I suppose it’s not THAT crazy to think the numbers could be in that ballpark if you weren’t really thinking about it too hard.
64% of icelanders live in the capital region, which is like two thirds of the US living in maine
Feels like they polled an elementary school in Philadelphia
Mississippi more like.
Feels like they polled an elementary school in Jersey
You mean the state with the highest ranked Pre-K-12 by US News and World Report? That Jersey?
https://www.usnews.com/news/best-states/rankings/education/prek-12
Errr, I mean "Lol Jersey sucks amirite?"
they estimated 21% of the population are trans, lol I wish 😂
If 21% of the population was trans, republicans ain't winning elections again.
You underestimate the proportion of dumb people. Trans people can also be dumb.
I mean I guess you're joking, but nevertheless I think it's a bad thing to hope that every fifth person gets born into a body their mind doesn't agree with.
eh I'm trans, and now that I've transitioned, it's largely a neutral experience, neither good nor bad, it just is. But in my comment I meant that I think society (broadly) wouldn't be nearly as transphobic if every 5th person was trans.
Yeah that's bananas. I wonder if people saying 1 in 5 people are trans even know a trans person
How incredible to see the effect of political messaging on citizen/voter perception. It is that the exaggerations, lies, and outrage marketing clearly have an outsized effect. I wouldn’t say the US population is dumb. But I would say the manipulation of perception is too much for the average person to do their own research and come up with unbiased facts.
***To those dismissing this based on inconsistencies between topics, you can’t make those comparisons. There is some blending of data in the methodology that is appropriate in order to look at the range. This is only about the gap between perception and reality, and a stack rank.
I unfortunately have to downvote this as this is far too interesting to be mildly interesting.
This is extremely interesting and illuminating. The kind of thing I’ve been interested in my whole adult life.
I grudgingly have to upvote you for being accurate even though the information is creating great discussions.
It was definitely a reluctant downvote from my side as well. But I feel this community is honestly abused and not living up to its name with the amount of "VeryInteresting" content.
Only 3% Atheists... And all of them are here on Lemmy.
Depending on who is doing the polling, I'm not answering truthfully. I don't want proselytizing and I don't want to risk getting sent to any Aushwitz that they are building. I doubt I am alone.
There's kind of a lot of Christians here actually... Or at least apologists.
These estimates are bananas, this only shows the systematic stupidification of Americans is highly successful.
There are some errors in the "correct" numbers For example, note that the respondents estimated that 89% of Americans have a high school diploma or higher. Yet the chart says the real figure is 65%. But doesn't that seem odd to you? Do you think on average 35% of people drop out of high school?
No, the source of this error is that the question is poorly worded. 90% of Americans 25 or older have a college degree. The graphic indicates the poll asked specifically about adults. And it seems the respondents had the correct answer, about 90%.
I don't know where they get the figure that only 65% of adults have a high school degree. My best estimate is that they mixed up "the percentage of adults with a high school degree" and "the percent of people with a high school degree." The latter would count all current K12 students, as they obviously don't have their diploma yet.
This is one item that really stood as an obvious and glaring error. And if I can see this one, I wonder if other numbers in either the 'correct' responses or the respondents' results are just due to poor or incorrect phrasing/interpretation of questions.
I have two master's degrees, have spent years teaching undergraduate engineering courses, am working on a dual-major PhD in engineering...and I...apparently...cannot read a plot.
the systematic stupidification of the 2000 Americans polled in this study*
Only 4% union members - no wonder the US is so fucked for workers
Yeah, I'd have thought there would be a lot more unions.
It seems the real thing this survey shows is most Americans are fucking dumb.
To be fair, the information they have access to suggests a much more diverse situation than reality. So it's understandable to be reluctant to recognize that any group might dominate the majority so much or that a well recognized minority population is actually so small. You'd have to study up the specific numbers, which are usually less important to keep track of than the relative subjective realitiies associated with each group.
Americans believe 20% of the people have an income of over 1 million dollars and 20% 30%of Americans live in NYC.
Am I reading this chart wrong?
?????
NYC has a population of what? 10 million people? So they think there's only 30 million people living in the states?
NYC stood out to me too. We think 3 out of 10 people in the US live in NYC??? Lmaooo. I think a big part of it is that we just generally don't comprehend statistics because some of these numbers are wild.
How many of these questions had you really, truly considered before?
I speculate that most Americans just don't think about these things that in depth and, when asked, throw out a number without giving due consideration.
Don't attribute to stupidity what can be adequately explained by laziness
Maybe because NYC(and LA) are stupidly over represented in the media.
I have a lot of doubt over the graph just based on how they average the results. You're bound to get people guessing super high or super low, which would skew if they were just getting the mean.
It's interesting to me that NYC, Jewish, and gay/lesbian all had the same wildly incorrect estimate on average.
The blue numbers are completely absurd. 30% live in Texas, 32% in California, 30% in NYC. And 20% with a household income over 1 million? I know a couple who are top seniors at Google & Apple, respectively, and while I think they may be over 500k annually, I doubt it's a million. And I definitely know they are far from the median.
2000 Americans polled in this study*
Imagine thinking 1 in 5 people are trans... Just... This has to be a math understanding issue, right??
Before traveling to California, I had people in my neighborhood plead with me not to go because the whole state is a "disaster area" and that the cities are burning and that there are "drug needles everywhere you walk" and that I was putting my life and those of my loved ones in serious danger. They thought with 100% certainty that Los Angeles was completely on fire from looting and I was going to some kind of Mad Max hellscape. Without exaggeration. They wouldn't listen to reassurance and were genuinely worried.
Granted some of these people were older, they weren't suffering dementia and could still drive. They just park in front of FOX news all day, every day, 24-hours a day swallowing conservative propaganda. They also have algorithmic filtering on their facebook and twitter.
Our perspectives of each others worlds has been damaged beyond repair because of this filtering. We have it on the left/progressive side too, showing us a different reflection of a pandering, emotionally validating worldview. Not as malicious maybe, but we are all trapped.
Perhaps people confuse/conflate it with a more broader category, like https://www.nbcnews.com/feature/nbc-out/nearly-1-5-young-adults-say-they-re-not-straight-n1270003
Well, the survey does not show the distribution of answers. So my guess (it's a guess, not data) is the people living in densely populated areas answered lower numbers, and people living in rural or remote areas ridiculously overestimated the number of trans people based on how much of a big "issue" medias are making of them.
For sure. Many Americans are confused by percentages. They do not understand that 20% is equivalent to saying "in a room of 100 people, 20 of them are trans", and even if they did understand that, they wouldn't have the proactive reasoning to make sure their percentage estimates add up/overlap in a way that makes sense, e.g not implying that 20 people in the room are all Hispanic Asian atheist Catholic bisexual transgender millionaires.
We’re talking about a population, where a 1/3lbs burger was rejected for being smaller than the 1/4lbs. But even besides that, the fear-mongering, and the propaganda, have clearly worked
they wouldn’t have the proactive reasoning to make sure their percentage estimates add up/overlap in a way that makes sense
Yeah the moment I saw 40% Hispanic, I had to go see how they answered on other races. 40 Black, 40 Hispanic, 30 Asian, 60 White. 170%
What morons did they ask? Holy shit.
92 % of the population lives in either California, new York or Texas?
Don't you know? The only city in the USA is either New York or Los Angleas or San Francisco. If its a movie about alien invasion then Washington, DC will also show up.
If its UK, the only city is London.
If its China, the only cities that exist are Beijing or Shanghai.
If its Japan, the only city that exist is Tokyo.
Welcome to Hollywood!
If its UK, the only city is London.
It is well known that if you are a being with access to all of time and space in your bigger-on-the-inside ship you will suspiciously hang out a lot in current day London.
It's kinda funny though, I have six friends I stay in touch with who live in the UK. They're all in London. No I didn't meet them there. Coincidence also reinforces confirmation bias. I know believe it is the only city.
30% Jewish, 27% Muslim, 58% Christian, 33% atheist. A very odd mix to estimate.
Well only 8% of the population lives outside California, Texas, and NYC.
If giving 110% is good, then giving over 148% is even better.
But I can believe it, it's not like they asked people to enumerate all at once, they presumably asked one at a time to estimate, and it's not like they are likely to try to reconcile those guesses with each other even if made in one sitting.
Funny that more people own a car than have a driver's license.
Hold up.
83% have a driver's license but 88% have a car?
So 5% of Americans either have a car for the hell of it, or they drive without a license?
And there's only 3% that are atheists? More people drive without a license than are atheists?
Excuse me?
If these numbers are correct, the US is more fucked than I thought.
My grandma has a car but she doesn't drive anymore. Now, if she needs a ride somewhere, I can take her in her own car, since mine is far too low to the ground for her.
Its possible they have lost their licence and still own a car, or the car is just in their name.
I hear you, but 5% seems high for that.
33% have a college degree yet only 3% are atheist. That's batshit crazy. I can't imagine having the critical thinking skills needed for a degree and not using those skills to figure out that god is a fairy tale.
Yes I know lots of educated people are religious - I had several christian professors when I was studying mathematics / computer science. That doesn't make it any less crazy to me.
What's not represented in the graph.. I think you'll find a large portion of agnostics and "cultural Christians". I.e. people who go to church because they're raised that way in their community expects it.
Even if you don't go to church if you were raised going to church and then stopped, you still might call yourself a [cultural] Christian.
Also being atheist has a bad reputation attached to it for some people, so someone who meets the definition might not self identify as one.
Similarly I expect that's also why there are a fewer percentage of Democrats than there are Republicans. I may have voted down ballot for only Democrats, but am I a DNC supporting Democrat? Not really.
Mt wife consider herself catholic but never goes to the church and live her life exactly like mine as an Atheist (doing drugs on techno parties). For the majority of people is just something they don't really think about and just consider themselves wharever religion just because they grow up in it.
Nominally "Christian" because they like Santa Claus and the Easter Bunny.
I think you are overestimating the intelligence required to get a degree in this country, also lots of intelligent people have religious beliefs of some level.
And most people who don't necessarily believe in god or practice any religion still respond to such questions with whatever religion they were born into because it's not important enough to them to take a hard stance like calling themselves atheist, or maybe they choose to be agnostic so they might not pick the atheist option.
My point is lots of factors go into surveys like these, they don't necessarily paint a super accurate picture, since any type of survey will have some external and internal biases and sampling issues baked into them
I'm extremely skeptical of any organized religion, where divine authority is asserted for the words said/written by some dudes, but I'm not going to close the door on something beyond what we can know.
But no one's guess carries any more weight than another, no person should be assumed to have an inherently more valid relationship with divinity than another.
So I have a bit of a vague faith, but not in any concrete concepts put forth by religion, since I have no reason to think their guess would be any better than a guess I could make on my own, and someone's ability to think otherwise seems a very dangerous reality.
It's not anything actionable, just more a hope that there's more to things than we see.
Being part of a Religion has social benefits, so don't be surprised if a lot of those non-Atheists don't trully believe it but participate in it because it's good for them or because of social pressure.
Certainly, and speaking in terms of Christians which is the ones I'm more familiar with, considering the number of people who actual strictly even just try to follow ALL the teachings of Jesus or even all of the 10 commandments, almost all "Religious" people pick and chose which parts they believe and which they don't.
(In modern society Greed and Envy by themselves are probably regularly broken by 99% of Christians).
I get this one. Many years ago a former wife tried to convert me. I started going to chruch, bible studies etc. and after a while I realised that none of the people I was with actually believed anything - they were just going through the motions doing the stuff you need to do to stay in the club.
Wait until you develop a chronic health issue and you discover how many so-called physicians jabber about god. It's fucking grim out there.
Because you don't need critical thinking skills for a degree.
This is the correct answer....tons of degrees are worth less than the paper they're printed on. College has become a grown up playground for many people. Probably 50% of the people who go, probably shouldn't and should have went to trade schools to learn something that's useful vs getting a degree in management.
Einstein believed in god.
More of a pantheist
Edit:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Albert_Einstein#Religious_and_philosophical_views
In a letter he wrote:
The word God is for me nothing more than the expression and product of human weaknesses, the Bible a collection of honorable, but still primitive legends which are nevertheless pretty childish. No interpretation no matter how subtle can (for me) change this. ... For me the Jewish religion like all other religions is an incarnation of the most childish superstitions. And the Jewish people to whom I gladly belong and with whose mentality I have a deep affinity have no different quality for me than all other people. ... I cannot see anything 'chosen' about them.
That depends on your definition of the word "god". Einstein certainly wasn't an Abrahamist, he was a pantheist. He believed the entire universe was comprised by a divine whole.
Others are bringing up good points, but one of the biggest reasons is many people are idiot savants. Smart in one or two areas and complete fucking morons in everything else.
I dunno if I'd use that term, but I can say that in my STEM field, the education was SO silo'd, that so many (otherwise very intelligent) people I've worked with in my field have been complete fucking morons about anything outside their area of expertise.
I fucked around a bit in college, and didn't declare a major for a while at first, so I ended up with a much more well-rounded education than most of my colleagues, and it really shows. Some of the most valuable courses I took were ones that I never would have had the chance to take had I declared my STEM major immediately.
They should honestly add an entire semester (at least) of non-major, liberal arts courses for STEM majors. It won't happen, obviously, but it really should be a thing.
You shouldn't use "god" as a proper noun. No one being owns the concept of being a god. You're just legitimising Abrahamism, you're not helping the atheist cause. Helping Abrahamists erase polytheism doesn't lead to more atheism, it leads to more Abrahamists.
88% own a car, but only 82% have a license? Interesting
You don't need a license to own a car. You need one to drive it.
You need one to drive it
legally
There are people, especially in the rural south, who own and operate a vehicle without a license.
Sometimes even congressmen
Something like 40% of drivers in San Antonio, Texas are unlicensed. The one time I’ve gotten in an accident, it was an uninsured, unlicensed driver.
I once let my license lapse for almost a year because I was working remotely and drove so little that I kept forgetting to renew it. Figure that 6% difference is only a few years in a lifetime, it's probably just lapsed licenses, and when people get to the age they stop driving they typically keep the car longer than the license
Probably bought the car then lost their license.
I did a quick check on one of the facts, the christian one, this says 70% in 2022 but i see 62% for 2022, which is a lot closer to the 58% estimate. Makes me feel a bit sketched out about possible cherry picking, but cool notion still.
29% Asian? 🤣
I fucking wish
As an Asian American, I don't feel safe going to a red jurisdiction.
Lol, right?
My dad was in the Air Force so we moved all over the place, but whenever we were stationed in the South in the 90's I would often be the first Asian person to ever go to that school.
I wonder how much of MAGA knows the entire population of illegal immigrants is estimated at a WHOPPING 3% of our population.
The 42% are democrats and 47% are republicans is the true surprise. That is a huge difference even though it might not seem like it.
I wonder how much that has to do with state rules on voting in primaries. Like, when I lived in MA I was registered independent because that would let me vote in any primary (but only one). My current state, I have to be affiliated with a specific party to vote.
Also interesting, the estimated percentage of Democrats is bigger than the estimated percentage of Republicans while the true percentage is the other way around.
Except it’s wrong. 40% are independents so a 50/50 split cannot happen.
This is a shitty poll as it splits everyone 50/50 and neither party has the plurality of voters.
92% of their population lives in either California, Texas, or NYC, if you do the maths.
Also between 30% gay/lesbian and 29% bisexual, only 41% are straight 🥴
(Ignoring asexuals, etc.)
Also 101% of the population is a Democrat or a Republican.
Honestly the most shocking number to me is that 65% of Americans own a house. How can 62% have a household income "over $50,000" and 65% own a house? Is it all old people?
A lot of older generations own a house pretty much
It's easier to put into perspective when you look at how much cheaper houses were before they got bought up by private equity
Very clear chart, nice.
Large cities and rich people heavily skew both the average and median cost for housing. It's not cheap, but there's plenty of smaller cities and towns that have affordable options.
Here's the methodology according to the YouGov website:
Methodology: This article includes findings from two U.S. News surveys conducted by YouGov on two nationally representative samples of 1,000 U.S. adult citizens interviewed online from January 14-20, 2022. The first survey included questions on groups involving race, education, income, family, gender, and sexuality, while the second survey included questions on religion, politics, and other miscellaneous groups. The samples were weighted according to gender, age, race, and education based on the 2018 American Community Survey, conducted by the U.S. Census Bureau, as well as 2016 and 2020 Presidential votes (or non-votes). Respondents were selected from YouGov’s opt-in panel to be representative of all U.S. citizens. Real proportions were taken from a variety of sources, including the U.S. Census Bureau, the Bureau of Labor Statistics, YouGov’s internal poll results, and the results of other well-established polling firms. Most estimates were collected within the past three years; the oldest is from 2009. Because the real estimates presented cover a range of time periods, they may differ from actual population sizes at the time our survey was conducted.
Sample size of 1000 is absolutely nothing for so many detailed/granular questions. Let alone then weighing the few sub-groups etc.
People just have no idea what numbers mean. And, look at how education works here, who could blame them?
Reminder that a McDonald's new burger campaign failed because people thought a ⅓ lb burger was smaller than a ¼ lb burger.
They really should have started selling ⅕ lb burgers to make up for their losses
Astronomers have been telling us for a long time that humans can’t fathom the scale of the universe.
But somehow we can fathom numbers of the same orders of magnitude when we talk about earthly affairs.
If people can’t understand how far away Mars is, how can they understand human population numbers?
bullshit there is no way people believe that 34% of the population is lefthanded.
All the 230% of US population.
"Mixed people exist racist!!!" - twitter
plus jewish isnt a race really. I mean it can be but you totally see most jewish people identify as jewish and white or jewish and arab.
Same as hispanic. It’s not really a “race”. So you have hispanic people who often identify as both hispanic and white, or hispanic and black, or hispanic and native american.
They should have provided a crash course in percentages before letting people do the questionable maybe.
Wouldn't have guessed you guys would have more vegans than union members
There are companies that make you watch anti union propaganda as part of orientation. They also pay tons of money to bust up any attempts at unionization. The disinformation thats pushed put about unions is baffling. Anything from its communism to the unions steal your money. Its not super surprising to me at this point.
On the flip side all the wealthy actors are union... Says a thing or two...
So looking at that chart the average person thinks that (roughly), one in four people are native American, one in four people are Asian, two in five people are black as well as two in five people being Hispanic. Or to use the given percentages the average American thinks that 136% of Americans are non-white. I suppose that explains a lot of the "white genocide" hysteria.
Yeah, obviously if only -36% of people are white we have already been genocided.
Part of this is people obviously not thinking about one per hundred and just giving a random percentage like number. Everything is clustered around 25, and 50 percent. This isn't reasonably measuring much(if anything as I can assure you nobody believes 90 percent of people live in either Texas, California, or NYC). The headline should be "don't poll people by asking what they think about qualitatively and asking them to translate it into quantitative percentages because you'll receive nonsense." Trying to reach other conclusions from such absolute noise really is just making things up.
The math contributes some to this. Let's say the correct answer is 1%, and out of ten people, 9 of them guess 1% and the other guesses 51% - that one guess shifts the average from 1% to 6%. And if it's 1%, then there's no room for people to underestimate and bring the number back down, and the same is true of numbers close to 100%. The numbers closer to the middle don't necessarily mean that people were more correct on an individual level, but that some people overestimated and others underestimated and it came out closer to the right number. The graph ought to give information about the spread of errors and not just the raw average.
Agree would be better to show the spread and highlight the median since they are more likely to be meaningful. Outliers have a huge impact here
Yes. Box+whiskers plot or something like that.
Not just over/under estimating, but people intentionally ignoring instructions, answering absurdly for the lulz, or just misunderstanding and inverting their answers (percent not).
Not a very robust study design.
Only 85% of the population owns a smartphone, I thought for sure it would be higher than that
15% of the population are under 12 and almost 5% are over 80.
ed: actually, it seems like "85%" is just bullshit. Probably closer to 95% Wondering if this might not be a decade+ old chart.
I sort of get it. There are more boomers and even Gen-X people who are choosing to own a dumb phone just because of the sheer enshittification of the Internet.
I get it.
the proportion who have at least a high school degree: estimate 65% vs. true 89%
the proportion who have an advanced degree: estimate 37% vs. true 12%
So basically what they guess is ±⅓ has no high school diploma and another ±⅓ has an advanced degree, while in reality ±1/10 doesn't have a high school diploma and ±1/10 has an advanced degree.
Meaning while in reality 77% does have a high school degree but not an advanced degree, the estimate is that only 28% does.
very very interesting indeed. i wonder what are the effects of this ..
I think this bias happens a bit anywhere where there is a limited range to opinion about, may be the interesting part is where is the tilt point, with the corresponding error estimation...
The actual problem is that if you show this data to the respondents, they wouldn't change their answers.
The social media revolution and its consequences...
We had this term “the Information Age.” I think it’s time we coined the term “the misinformation age”, and it’s super appropriate that they are chronologically adjacent. It perfectly illustrates how humanity turns a useful technology into destructive harmful garbage in almost no time just so the greedy can greed.
The US has transformed disinformation into an art form at this point.
Edward Bernays is a bastard.
Actually it's 50% on everything you either belong to a group or you don't /j
This might just be a study of how our perception tends to disregard or "dilute" extreme numbers. Imagine someone had an accurate feel for these percentages. They might trend towards a less extreme value, producing a similar result.
30% bisexuals. Not even I would have guessed that high.
I would have said 5% and am happy im kinda close
This is one of those things where context being broken down affects a lot. If you ask only GenZ, they respond more like 15% bi, and millennials is somewhere in the ballpark of 5%. I'd be willing to bet the responses used to make the OP are similarly skewed by demographic for the obvious reasons.
YouGov would happily take your bet I guess:
The samples were weighted according to gender, age, race, and education based on the 2018 American Community Survey, conducted by the U.S. Census Bureau, as well as 2016 and 2020 Presidential votes (or non-votes).
It's because of American porn viewing habits.
I think they should be including a range for the true value for the minorities, since a lot of these numbers are inexact.
This only shows me that Americans are bad at guessing.
*perceiving
indians, from india are one of the richest POC groups in america.
My 3 year old has a college degree? Dang! No wonder I can't understand half the shit he says.
household income over $X per what period of time?
I somehow don't find it very plausible that there are many people who believe that 21% of people are transgender, or even 30% gay or lesbian. But I too would have overestimated the number of atheists.
What period of time?
Per year. At least in America if someone asks you how much you make you'll either give hourly or yearly.
OK, in my country many people think in monthly income because we receive our paychecks monthly.
3% Gay seems very low though. I really think that number is wrong.
I think that this probably generalises from "Americans" to "humans".
Just like their IQ.
I feel like a lot of these numbers, both the "estimated" and "actual" are just outright fucking wrong. Every single person I grew up with was at least some level of gay or bisexual. I get what they're going for, but they're also dramatizing it by picking more extreme numbers. Like I'd bet that only 30% of people are actually, truly cishet, if not even lower.
Then there's the problem of a single number of "estimated", which can only be an average number. Which contains, likely, some juicy demographics data, assuming they actually polled enough people and kept all the information. I'd be curious to see graphs for each and every number presented here.
Hey look, this post is about you
I'm mainly wondering how in the everloving fuck apparently the average guess for "live in new york city" is 30%? Surely that has to be trolls answering 100% skewing the average? The number of nyc residents i have floating around in my head is 20 million for some reason (which as it turns out is already a vast overestimation), which would be around 7% with the 330 million i have floating around for US population (which is pretty close to the real number)
I know the US education system isn't great, but surely people at least have some very basic knowledge about their own country?
The bi thing is almost certainly your bubble. Younger generations (just gonna guess you aren't beyond your mid thirties at most, if yes then I'd find your experience very surprising) skew more towards expressing non-hetero sexualities already, and being around more ideologically left-wing groups likely skews it heavily. It could also be that some people feel some same-sex attraction, but still identify as hetero.
The numbers do seem about right in general, bisexuality is a weird thing bc I'm also quite convinced some degree of it is extremely common, but that doesn't mean all those people identify that way.
This is a country where a 1/3 lb burger wasn't successful because people though the 1/4 lb burger was bigger and cost less.
We are not a smart people.
Ah. I missed the fine print part that says the actual data is from census polls, rather than what is actually likely. When you said "that doesn't mean all those people identify that way", I was like BUT THAT'S THE WHOLE POINT. That does change my impression of the graph significantly, because that would not necessarily mean the numbers are "actual", but rather, should read "actual poll data".
Most of the graph I feel is about right, too. I just find it hard to believe a lot of the upper half of the stuff is so wildly wrongly estimated AND that non-hertero sexualities is still portrayed as basically legacy data, rather than trying to forecast what we all know would be if people weren't repressed by society. Again, though, it's this way to fit a narrative, thus my minor issue.
I'm kind of blown away that 88% of Americans have flown on an airplane. If everyone is so broke, how are they affording to fly? And people just don't care about the environmental impact? I've never flown, and I can't imagine I ever will.
This is a fairly disconnected statement "ever" includes
Generalistically people are poor because they are thousands to tens of dollars per year underneath where they would need to be to be middle class. For instance earning 20,000 per year less than a middle class family x 20 years = $400,000 less Whereas you are wondering how people can possibly be poor because they had $350 once ever. This is like those weird fucks who think people who have smart phones can't be poor.
Also worrying about the environmental impact of poor people flying once back in 1995 is ... probably moot.
I did some more digging. 52% of Americans have flown in the past year, including 60% of 18-24 year olds. 70-75% of those flights were for leisure travel. (https://www.airlines.org/wp-content/uploads/2025/03/A4A-Air-Travel-Survey-Key-Findings-18Mar2025.pdf) So I'm still confused - I hear all the time from young people that they can't afford necessities, that they're one paycheck away from being homeless, that they'll never own a home - but they're able to drop an average of $2k/year on vacations? (https://www.chime.com/blog/average-cost-of-a-vacation/) Make it make sense. Seven years of vacations would be the a down-payment on the median home price. I didn't take a vacation until my mid 30s because I was trying to ensure that my money went to life stability, so it's just kind of a head scratcher to me that people are so loose with their money while knowing that it could very easily make them homeless.
America is big and it doesn't have high-speed rail, so if you need to go to a different state the only options are flying or driving for 56 hours.
Holy, holy, holy...they actually thought 21% of people are transgender? 1 in 5?? The only thing this proves is the polled Americans are stupid AF. 🙄🙄🙄
seems like they polled mostly boomers or conservatives.