Everyone knows that perception is everything, with public opinion about the country’s various issues often shaping and promoting widespread misconceptions and stereotypes. A new study, has shown that while perception may be important, it can often be rooted in something other than truth, especially when it comes to topics such as immigration, teenage pregnancy and unemployment.
The Perils of Perception study, by Ipos Mori questioned 1000 16-64 year olds, in 14 different countries, about how well they know their respective countries and overall, it seems people are highly misinformed about the state of their various nations.
The British, for example believe that there are twice as many immigrants in the country than what is actually true. In fact only 13 percent of people in Britain are immigrants, although those surveyed believe that the number is much higher at 24.4 percent.
Another topic that the survey targets is islamaphobia, where those surveyed were asked how many people out of 100 they thought were Muslims. In the UK people believe that 21 percent (1/5) of its population is Muslim, when in fact the number is four times lower, at 5%. In contrast, the survey showed that Brits were also misinformed about the number of Christians in the UK (59 percent) believing that it is much lower at 39 percent.
Bobby Duffy, Managing Director of Ipsos MORI Social Research Institute, said:
“These misperceptions present clear issues for informed public debate and policy-making. For example, public priorities may well be different if we had a clearer view of the scale of immigration and the real incidence of teenage mothers. People also under-estimate “positive” behaviours like voting, which may be important if people think it is more “normal” not to vote than it actually is.
“This is the first international study to look at these misperceptions across a range of issues and countries – and it shows the British are far from alone in being wrong. In fact we’re among the better informed countries – but there are still huge gaps between perceptions and reality on a number of key issues in Britain.”
Britain is not the only country with uninformed citizens, with several other nations including the US, Italy and France also believing that immigration is much higher than it actually is.
While Brits are quite ignorant about the country’s numbers, they are in fact the 5th least ignorant country out of the 14 countries surveyed. Italy takes the lead, with most of its citizens being completely clueless about the make-up of their nation.
