3 minute read
Perils of perception - how skewed are you?
If I asked you what proportion of the New Zealand population are Muslim, what would you estimate? In our industry, we tend to have a firm understanding of the makeup of our population, but that’s not necessarily the case for the general population. On average, New Zealanders estimated that 11% of our population are Muslim, when in reality it’s just 1%. Compared to some other countries, we were relatively accurate, Australian respondents on the other hand were far more misaligned with reality. They had an average guess of 17%, which was 14 percentage points above the actual of just 3%. South African respondents, at the most extreme end of misperception, had an average guess of 26% when the reality is just 2%.
Out of every 100 people in [COUNTRY], about how many do you think are Muslim?
Please see http://perils.ipsos.com/ for full details of all sources
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On a different topic, we asked respondents “Out of every 100 infants aged under 12 months in New Zealand, about how many do you think have had all the World Health Organization recommended vaccinations for Diphtheria, Tetanus, Whooping Cough, Polio and Measles?”
What would you estimate? Have a good guess before you read on (without checking Google!). We hear a lot in the media about the importance of immunising our children, we’ve probably heard this statistic once or twice – although it’s unlikely we can remember the answer with all the other things going on inside our heads. But we can probably all recall hearing of parents who are “anti-vax”. We’ve heard their stories through the media about babies that have become autistic, fallen ill or even died after having vaccinations. As a mother of a child who had meningitis as a premature baby, I have strong views on the importance of vaccinations, and when speaking about it with others, I’ve found many people do.
As we’re thinking about what the proportion might be, all of these things are running through our minds. Even though we’re not aware of it, and it may only take a split second to come up with an estimate, our subconscious brain has looked at everything we know and have heard about the topic to help us come to a decision. So, what was your answer? On average, New Zealanders guessed 72% (compared to a global average guess of 73%).
This was a rather large 22 percentage points below the reality of 94% (also 94% globally).
Why do we underestimate this figure? There are likely to be a few things at play. Firstly it’s a highly emotive issue; what could be more emotive than the health of our kids? As researchers we are all aware of how emotion impacts our decision-making abilities. Secondly, when we are unsure we tend to hedge our bets towards the middle, meaning we’re unlikely to give a very high or very low answer. In addition, the media coverage of the topic doesn’t help our misperceptions. Media is often keeping stories of those who are anti-vaccination alive, resulting in the availability heuristic encouraging us to overestimate the proportion of parents who don’t vaccinate.
But what does all this mean? And why does it even matter?
It means that many of us get a lot of basic social and political facts very wrong. There are many different reasons why we may be wrong about various facts relating to society. These can include external influences, such as what we hear in the media, online, or from our friends and family, but our own internal biases are just as important. These biases include our tendencies to focus more on negative stories over positive ones, to believe that things were always better in the past, to put too much emphasis on our own individual experience, and
Amanda Dudding is Director, Public Affairs at Ipsos and heads up their Wellington office. She has recently joined the RANZ Wellington Executive Committee
