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by skybrian 1 day ago
Here's an example making the rounds, originally from 2022: there is systemic bias in Americans' understanding of US national statistics about all kinds of subgroups:

https://yougov.com/en-us/articles/41556-americans-misestimat...

(Although, apparently the poll didn't ask how uncertain they were. The question was, "If you had to guess, what percentage of American adults...")

3 comments

I wouldn't be surprised if this were a general cognitive bias having to do with estimating proportions, and nothing to do specifically with minority groups.
The total of the estimates of minority group percentages is well over 100%!
do be fair, so is the truth. One can be both transgender and jewish (or a military veteran and live in texas!), theres no contradiction in that. In fact I would expect that most people are a minority in at least one way (note the presence of things like "live in new york" in the minorities there!)
I meant ethnic minorities:

"Muslim Americans (estimate: 27%, true: 1%) and Jewish Americans (estimate: 30%, true: 2%). And we find the same sorts of overestimates for racial and ethnic minorities, such as Native Americans (estimate: 27%, true: 1%), Asian Americans (estimate: 29%, true: 6%), and Black Americans (estimate: 41%, true: 12%)."

Did they really estimate that 30% of us adults live in New York?