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 more worried about.”
How much do you really know? Take Bobby’s quiz and find out… 1. On average, how much does it cost to raise a child from birth to 21 in the UK, not including private education or university costs? A. £230,000 B. £100,000 C. £80,000 It’s around £230,000 but the average guess is just £100,000. It’s a difficult calculation, adding up things you may not think of: for example, you’ll blow an average of £16,000 per child on your holidays. What’s maybe more surprising is that parents are even more wrong: their average guess is just £80,000!
2. What percentage of Britain’s population are immigrants, that is, were born abroad? A. 13% B. 25% C. 7%
The average guess is 25% but it’s only around 13%. So it seems we have the wrong idea about a big national concern and a key reason people give for voting to leave the EU.
Our high guess is partly because we’re worried about it: we exaggerate worries in our heads. Just telling people the real figure won’t make many less concerned – it’s more emotional than that.
3. What percentage of the British population do you think will be Muslim by 2020? A. 7% B. 22% C. 40%
The best estimate we have is that around 7% will be Muslim in a couple of years. That’s pretty fast growth, up from 4.8% in 2016. But the guess was that 22% of Brits will be Muslims by 2020 – one in every five British people!
The reasons we overestimate are similar to those around the issue of immigration.
But we’re not the worst... The French guess 40% of their population will be Muslim by 2020, when the best estimate is 8.3%. 4. On average, how many times have young people aged 18-29 had sex in the past four weeks? A. 4 B. 14 C. 7 Maybe not unrelated to how wrong we are about a later question on teenage births, we’re also very wrong on how often young people have sex. You can relax – everyone else is not having much more sex. Our guess is young people are having sex 14 times a month but the reality is a more mundane four. 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. 5. What proportion of Brits aged 13 or over have a Facebook account? A. 58% B. 74% C. 85%
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. 5. What percentage of girls aged 15-19 give birth each year? A. 19% B. 1.4% C. 6.7%
Only 1.4% give birth each year but the average guess is 19%. That would mean six girls in an all-girl class of 30 pupils would be giving birth every year!
This is partly because we’re drawn to vivid anecdotes, where we’ll have heard about individual cases and generalised from those.
We’re slow to update our view on progress. There have been big falls in teenage births but we don’t really notice gradual improvement.
7. Some vaccines cause autism in healthy children – is that true, false or are you unsure? A. True B. False C. Unsure
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 Brits 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. 8. What percentage of the British population aged 20 or over are overweight or obese? A. 44% B. 62% C. 23% Depressingly, 62% are overweight or obese. It’s one of our greatest health challenges. But dealing with it is not helped by the fact our average guess is 44%. This is partly because we’re in denial – studies show only a fraction of people who medics would count as severely obese think they are. ■ The Perils of Perception: Why We’re Wrong About Nearly Everything, by Bobby Duffy, is published by Atlantic Books on September 6 and priced £12.99.