most people just do not think in percentages. the human brain doesn't instinctively deal with numbers like that. stop asking people to guess the percentage of the public that think or are a certain thing. - ThreadSky

gemofamara.com • 1 day ago

most people just do not think in percentages. the human brain doesn't instinctively deal with numbers like that. stop asking people to guess the percentage of the public that think or are a certain thing.

Reposted from Luke Tryl

Firstly progressive activists tend to overestimate how many people share their views, often overestimating by a factor of 2-3 the prevalence of more 'progressive' views. This can lead to campaigners thinking they can take an 'activation' rather than 'persuasion' approach.

Comments

jigglybitch.bsky.social•1 day ago

There was a US one that said republicans think 20% of people are trans.

gemofamara.com•1 day ago

not even a left/right thing. like this yougov us study had people accidentally guessing more than half of americans were either jewish or muslim, then guessing that 57% of us population was christian. people don't think in percentages. https://bsky.app/profile/gemofamara.com/post/3lbq7fsmdyc2d

dennismtracy.bsky.social•1 day ago

Drives me nuts when Family Feud does those types of questions because it’s a literal crapshoot

lawsonsv.bsky.social•1 day ago

nickwidzowski.bsky.social•1 day ago

Related in terms of some of our current issues, people also seem to think that like half of the federal budget directly subsidizes other countries too

brandonmm.bsky.social•1 day ago

A slightly different problem came up with a variation on the political compass that was being shared just before the UK election last year, it asked whether you want more or less of something but there's one big problem: it's impossible to guess how much of something there is now!

honeybakedsam.bsky.social•23 hours ago

Also I think people just don’t actually put much effort into getting this right, I think I’ve seen (although I can’t recall the study) that if you offer people a small amount of money for getting the answer correct all of a sudden they get much more accurate

blubball.bsky.social•18 hours ago

~2 weeks ago I saw an interesting paper that concluded if you remove all the people from the dataset of such questions that answered in round number (ending in 0 or 5) you get the "wisdom of the crowds" effect to appear again and it averages out to a pretty good guess.
https://doi.org/10.1177/00016993241311523

dorkatron.bsky.social•23 hours ago

They did a poll and only 46% of Americans even know each state gets two senators. How in the world do they expect them to be accurate with this stuff?

Comments

Posting Rules

Reply