Misperceptions of Population Demographics

A widespread societal problem is ignorance about groups of people

The product of cognitive biases, logical fallacies and misinformation, a widespread societal problem is ignorance about groups of people.

The British research and data analysts YouGov showed that Americans tend to greatly overestimate the size of minority groups and underestimate the size of majority groups. Many of the estimates are amazingly off. For example, Jews make up 2 percent of the United States population, while those polled estimated it was 30 percent. Four percent of Americans belong to a union, but those polled guessed it was 36 percent. Three percent of Americans are gay or lesbian, but people estimated it was 30 percent.

These misperceptions come from people both within and without the group. In fact, people outside the group often have a more accurate perception of the size than those within the group.

Whether race, gender, religion, ethnicity or nationality, any demographic is made up of a diversity of viewpoints, philosophies, personal experiences, and political and social positions. There is a range of views even within each major political party. However, a small and sometimes extreme portion of a group is often misperceived or misrepresented as representing the majority of the group.

For example, progressives make up only 11 percent of the American Democratic Party, yet they are often painted as representing the views of the entire party. This can be because the small group is assertive and vocal. It is also because the Republicans falsely portray the small group as representing the views of the entire party. 

Media and entertainment influence public perceptions, for various reasons misreporting, stereotyping, and fixating on specific areas. Science journalist Karen L. Rudd writes, “Flattened discourse, unfortunately, is often an outcome of certain traditions in journalism. I don’t like ‘blaming the journalists’ but there are limits to the medium and over-simplification is one of them.” Twitter and social media often paint a false portrait of a demographic, with most Twitter posts made by a small percentage of users. People often get into political and ideological echo chambers where they are exposed to only one point of view.  

Conventional wisdom and widespread ideas about all sorts of subjects can be incorrect, including in science, medicine, society and history. A Pew research poll showed that the general public continues to debate ideas where most scientists agree.

The spiral of silence

Contributing to these misperceptions is a phenomenon called the spiral of silence. Studied by German political scientist Elisabeth Noelle-Neuman, the spiral of silence is where people afraid of social ostracization don’t express views that they feel are in the minority. They sometimes publicly say they agree with majority views that they don’t agree with.

Being socially shunned is a legitimate fear with today’s Twitter mobs and call-out and cancel cultures. Illiberalism and censorship don’t always come in the form of edicts or rules from authority. They can come via groupthink and crowd following, peer pressure and going along to get along. Self-censorship is censorship.

Misrepresentations and misunderstandings create bad decisions

Cognitive biases, logical fallacies, overreliance on emotional reasoning, social tribalism, dogmatic thinking, and misunderstanding of demographics lead to poor decisions at both the personal and largescale levels.   

Government and private policies are often based on misperceptions, cognitive distortions, and sometimes flat-out wrong beliefs. Policies about crime prevention, diversity, homelessness, and medicine that are driven by stereotypes, preconceptions and ideology over facts and science have proven counterproductive to the desired cause. Pseudoscientific ideologies about diseases and agriculture have led to widespread preventable deaths. Wars have started over misperceptions and logical fallacies. Misperceptions about demographics can lead to policies intended to benefit of the demographic but that the majority in the demographic don’t support.