Daily Mirror (Northern Ireland)
I can tell you for a fact...
Take our quiz to find out truth behind perceptions
Our beliefs about life might often seem irrefutable to us but a new book called The Perils of Perception shows how wrong we often are.
Drawing on interviews Ipsos MORI has conducted, author Bobby Duffy says: “Misperceptions aren’t because we’re dumb. They provide clues to what we’re worried about and what we should be worried about.”
How much do you really know? Take Bobby’s quiz and find out… French guess 40% of their population will be Muslim by 2020, when the best estimate is 8.3%. Sex is central to the survival of species but we don’t talk about it much. This means misperceptions breed. We’re drawn to gossip, racy TV shows and porn.
The answer is 58%, which is remarkable and shows how Facebook has wormed its way into most lives. But the average guess was 74%. This is partly because our surveys are done online, so everyone who takes part has the internet and are more likely to use Facebook. We can’t help assuming other people are more like us than they are.
This is one of our most dangerous misperceptions, because all the best evidence, including a review of more than one million children, suggests there is no link.
But 55% of us think it’s true or are not sure.
These sort of theories are really hard to fight. We want to protect our children, so we latch on to any chance we may be taking risks with their health.