Important point I learned from this paper - overestimation of the population sizes of minority groups is a more general cognitive error and NOT a domain-specific misperception.
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A robust finding with broad empirical support. We found it when customer service agents were asked to estimate the frequency of request types. I would guess that motivated reasoning amplifies this bias, but I better read the paper first.
I suspect a great many Americans simply don’t know what a percentage is. They’ll estimate some group is “40% of the population” with no real conception that 40% is 2 out of every 5 people. They just know it’s kind of a big number.
Yep. Functional illiteracy. Many also think there's a bigger half of something, don't realize the formulation of the question and sample matter for a poll, and are inundated with absurd notions and fallacies. It's sad. But it is not only in the US...
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