Why Do Americans Wildly Overestimate the Size of Minority Groups?

POLITICS & POLICY
Job seekers at a job fair in Uniondale, N.Y., in 2014 (Shannon Stapleton/Reuters)
Failures of curiosity and statistical reasoning lead some to overstate, by a lot, what percentage of Americans are black.




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A
recent YouGov poll asked Americans to estimate the size of various groups. One finding stands out above the others. Taylor Orth of YouGov writes, “When people’s average perceptions of group sizes are compared to actual population estimates, an intriguing pattern emerges: [Americans] tend to vastly overestimate the size of minority groups.” Among many other groups, this was true of millionaires, transgenders, Jews, atheists, vegans, Asian Americans, and African Americans.

The survey respondents estimated that 41 percent of Americans are black, when in reality, only 12 percent are. In one sense, this question should be especially easy. If you had looked up …

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