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“Does correcting misperceptions of group size change peoples’ attitudes on related issues? Current research suggests it does not. In a series of studies (one of which used a survey fielded by YouGov), political scientists John Sides and Jack Citrin attempted to correct inaccurate beliefs about the size of the U.S. foreign-born population, both subtly, by embedding the accurate information in a news story, and explicitly, by providing survey respondents with Census Bureau estimates. They found that while providing this information did somewhat improve people’s knowledge of the number of immigrants in America, they did not make people more supportive of immigration.”

Post facts society

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Right because this shows people don’t understand percentages not that they don’t understand minority representation. When a lot of people say 20% of the US is trans they are just trying to express that it’s a minority not really that it is exactly 1 in every 5

We just did this post a couple hours ago

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Who the hell thinks 90 million people live in Texas?

Percentage of Americans who live in Texas: estimate: 30%

People are really bad at understanding proportions smaller than 20% it seems

I really don’t buy these numbers 21% of people are trans or 20% of American households make a million a year? How many transexual millionaires do you guys know? 30% of Americans live in New York City alone? What? And who thinks 27% of Americans are Native Americans? I have a neighbor who’s Native American and he’s the only Native American I’ve ever seen outside of the internet or tv and he’ll tell you the same thing other than his family obviously

I know Americans are stupid but come on these can’t be right

Apparently the same percentage that lives in New York City.

It got taken down by the mods for some technical reason

92% of the population in NY, TX and CA apparently.

21 percent are transgender? I can guess where they get their news from

Blame it both on right and left.

LGBTQ+ representation in film and TV tends to over estimate their proportions and right wing media does the same to incite fear mongering.

What makes you think this? There's another explanation here that some people believe being trans is "fashionable" and kinda are being "groomed." If you turn on Fox News you will see they truly think this is an epidemic. Why do you think that is less likely than your explanation that people are just really stupid and don't understand percentages, but really actually understand the true percentage of trans people in society?

I agree with you. Some of these numbers are way off. The trans and gay percentages are way off. And the estimated ethnic minority percentages alone add up to way over 100%.

It absolutely does not. Straight people are everywhere in every single piece of media including those that would be labeled as LGBT media. In most such LGBT media queer people are still numerical minorities in the stories that are principally about them. Queer representation in media is still vanishing slim compared to the actual proportions of our society

If it were JUST trans people then your argument would maybe make sense. But people are doing the same thing about EVERY minority group no matter how “objectionable” or “unobjectionable” that media tries to paint them. My explanation means people are way less stupid than your explanation would. Like you really feel Americans BELIEVE that about 1:3 people live in Texas and 1:3 live in Texas and 1:3 live in California and no one lives anywhere else? No, they just don’t conceptually understand percentages. Simple

People need to start looking into how yougov runs surveys. Literally pay >$1/hr for people to take surveys. The faster you take them the more you earn.

They’re completed by people in third world countries claiming to be from somewhere else clicking buttons as quickly as possible.

This isn't valid logic. You're basically saying because they made one mistake about one group, every mistake about every other group is based on the exact same mistaken idea and there can be no other answer for any other situation.

This logic especially falls apart in the current political climate. There is no political party making it their platform that there is an epidemic of people identifying as Texan. There are, however, multiple political parties around the world, including in the US, saying that there is an epidemic of trans people grooming children and making them trans, and of trans identity being fashionable.

In other words, your logic is because these people don't understand percentages they can never think any minority groups are actually bigger than they are. You really can't see why that falls apart?

I have no idea what you’re even trying to say… I’m actually a statistician but believe whatever you want about this data

If this was true 1 in 100 people on TV and in movies would be trans. That is absolutely not the case.

And I'm a lawyer, if we are pulling out qualifications just to support our arguments. Your underlying logic is a mess. I will explain again:

You are taking one statement ("People don't understand percentages") and are trying to apply it across the board to every mistaken belief about minority group sizes. Despite the fact all minority groups are not the same and are not treated the same by society.

To do this you are purposely shutting your eyes to any other explanation that may apply only to some groups and not universally. Like the fact GOP leaders like DeSantis are making it their entire platform that gender dysphoria is somehow spreading like a virus through grooming.

Honestly, what am I saying that you're objecting to? Do you disagree that conservatives have made it a major political point that trans people are recruiting children? Or are you arguing that there's just no way this mistaken belief could be showing up in the data?

Actually it would be half that - 1 in 200 people

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Even that. There’s zero change 1 in 200 people in media are trans. I’d be surprised if it was 1 in 1000.

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Yes that is precisely what science would consider a better explanation: to find a simple single solution that explains all the consistently odd results. Not to say “wow the same thing happens for all these different instances … Let’s assume one solution that fits our political agenda for one of them and then look for a completely different explanation for each of the other cases.”

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in 2021, it was 0 in... however many characters in in all movies released that year. Last year it was 2 in... however many characters were in all movies last year.

To be clear, not just main characters, not just important side characters, all characters.

https://www.glaad.org/sri/2021/overview

Yeah the trans community are way under-represented but that doesn't hold true for gays for eg.

Almost 1 in 4-5 characters in TV shows I watched in the past few years have been gay. In some shows like Sex Education, half of the characters are queer.

Interesting to see that 47% are Republicans while 42% are Democrats. The survey has them split almost 50/50. I’ve heard that Democrats are in the majority but they are concentrated in fewer states. This is what is given as the reason Republicans can control governments.

How can that be????

You mean you're going to sit here impersonating a statistician and plead for the acceptance of universal human logic as a concept?

Really?

>queer representation in Hollywood is exactly the same as Fox News telling you the drag queens and trans folk are going to mind control and molest your children

You enlightened centrists never cease to amaze me.

It's as much an indictment of American education as any other thing.

Looks like it was closer to 1 in 10 (11.9%) vs. 7.2% who identify as such, but that was only last year. Before then it was well below.

Definitely sone shows have higher representation, just like some communities have higher representation.

https://ew.com/tv/glaad-reports-record-high-lgbtq-tv-characters/

Exactly. And somehow that would be too many for many who refuse to believe they deserve basic empathy.

So in other words, you want one simple solution that applies to all situations. And you think somehow this makes you scientific instead of dogmatic?

Nowhere have you even argued against anything I said. You are just insisting one simple solution that applies universally is best.

You are the worst type of statistician. One who wants to ignore human messiness and politics because they complicate things too much. You're basically trying to turn sociology into a study of universal constants, with all the parts that make humans an especially difficult topic to study removed.

Probably the same people who think there are >90M people in NYC.

I agree that LGBTQ+ and even racial minorities are perceptually over represented in media. I think folks in less urban areas see the media that takes place in more densely populated places and so they feel it’s all in their face. I don’t have data to prove out whether this is actually real, but I believe the perception is absolutely true and I do this media shaped that in a significant way. I’ve been downvoted for saying this before but I don’t think it’s controversial.

I said they're both the reason why Americans think queer population is larger than it actually is. Didn't say anything about whether good or bad they are.

I know being an extremist (far left or right) helps people feel a sense of community and belonging but I don't think it's worth of a trade off it to shut off your brain and live in an eco chamber all your life attacking whoever doesn't fully agree with you.

Play enough rpg and you know exactly how much a 3% buff is

>I said they're both the reason why Americans think queer population is larger than it actually is. Didn't say anything about whether good or bad they are.

I think that was my whole point. Implying these behaviors are "the same" is shortsighted bordering on deceptive. Obviously in a vacuum, if every ensemble television or movie cast tics every representational diversity box, you're not going to have anything resembling a literal representational cross-section of broader society. I doubt seriously it causes as much overestimation as a 24 hour news cycle that hypes the same aspects of representational diversity as inimical to and actively conquering broader society.

All that aside the fact that one of these groups is regularly doing stochastic terrorism on live television, and it's not actually the kids from Euphoria.

Lol what? People aren’t good with understanding percentages and what they mean. Yes I will absolutely stand by that

Media is a big reason for this. You'd think watching US TV that black people are like 70-80% of the population instead of 12%

One one simple explanation adequately explains all the results, yes that is best. If the data showed something else and some pieces didn’t fit then yes, other solutions should be sought. Very frequently the most boring answer is the right one, as much as you want to make it be some complicated political thing.

(And for what it’s worth I’m politically on “your side”. The right wing media is poisoning the well regarding trans people and, hey, maybe without that this poll shows 16% estimated instesd of 20% or something. The point is you don’t need that explanation to explain it because every other data point is showing the same misunderstandin)

The reasons for that phenomenon are not nearly uniform, just like literally anything to do with human nature. You can't use Occam's Razor against human logic, it will never work.

An actual statistician would be painfully aware of this, and not gainsaying people presenting perfectly reasonable explanations that aren't just "everyone is bad at estimates for exactly the same reason".

Not “everyone” obviously. But overall we see bad estimates from humans on average in every category here when pooled together. So yes that is exactly the reason for this. Your “logic” is not only bad it is totally backwards. But I don’t care to speak with you anymore.

I'm not concerned with which side you're on. It has no bearing on your terrible logic and wanting to remove all human complexity from analyzing this data.

There are only 26 million Sikhs in the world and 24 million live in India. Yet seems like they are everywhere here in Canada. Perceptions can be very odd.

Play enough turm based strategy and know how low a 90% hit chance is.

Goddamnit zen headbutt…

I would toss this up to Hollywood and having quotas or inclusion numbers that don't represent the true numbers percentage wise of the population.

When talking about representation, nobody cares about the background extras.

It’s about the min characters and recurring characters.

No way people estimated 1 in 5 are transgender. I imagine it being higher than actual, but this seems like bullshit

How people identify politically:

WASHINGTON, D.C. -- On average, Americans' political party preferences in 2021 looked similar to prior years, with slightly more U.S. adults identifying as Democrats or leaning Democratic (46%) than identified as Republicans or leaned Republican (43%).

-gallup polls

https://news.gallup.com/poll/388781/political-party-preferences-shifted-greatly-during-2021.aspx

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Party registration

As of October 2022, 48 million registered voters in these areas identified themselves as Democrats. At 38.78%, Democrats represented the single largest share of registered voters in the states and territories that allow voters to indicate partisan affiliation on their registration forms.

A total of 36.4 million registered voters identified themselves as Republicans, representing 29.42% of registered voters in these areas.

A total of 35.3 million registered voters identified themselves as independents or unaffiliated with any political party. This amounted to 28.55% of registered voters in these areas.

-ballotopedia

https://ballotpedia.org/Partisan_affiliations_of_registered_voters

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49m democrats & 38.8m republicans (registered)

https://worldpopulationreview.com/state-rankings/registered-voters-by-party

I would disagree. I think “under representation” have gone the way of the “gender wage gap” - true at some point, but nothing but a convenient myth in the present.

So wait, people thought:

62% of Americans had a household income over $50K,

34% had a household income over $100K,

26% had a household income over $500K, and

20% had a household income over $1M?

That’s kind of crazy.

The important factor here that skews your perception is "in TV shows I watched."

That is very much not true across all TV shows.

Your data is what I remembered. That throws this survey to be questionable.

All who live outside US believe:

• 95% of US population own multiple guns
• 95% of US population live in a mix of Texas, Alabama and Florida
• Americans eat only cheap and ugly burgers and drink cola
• newborns get a car (and a gun) right in a hospital
• no one has medical insurance and people go bankrupt right after first visit to hospital
• everyone has a lawyer
• doctors and dentists fly their own jets and own mansions
• IT folks (developers, engineers) work from beaches 2 hours a day and have 7 digit salary
• there is no vacation
• everybody work 80 hours week
• police randomly shoot people. Each cop needs to shoot at least 5 citizens every day

,and so on and so forth… I’ve heard so much nonsense from folks abroad about US…

How many people?

Maybe join /r/AmericaBad, they've got a circlejerk you'll fit right into.

Did you hear about the Jewish lesbian in a union that makes $500k, who’s also gay and a Catholic Hispanic transgender left handed Texan.

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Unpopular opinion.

At least in significant number of those the cases, the statistics are wrong, not most people.

From outdated statistics about trans people, to selection bias from surveys used to form other statistics.

Ontop of all that, this is a survey of the type of people who respond to "YouGov" polls, which will include trolls.

In addition if the pollsters were paid, it makes sense that most of them would spam 30% or a similiar number through most of the questions so they can get their money and move on. I've done these things with paid polls, and you get like three cents a survey so you don't want to waste a ton of time on it reading and thinking about all the questions.

You want to scan for gotcha questions like "Are you reading all the questions?" incase the survey creator was smart enough to include those, and spam quick answers for all the other questions.

Even Americans think the US is only Texas (22%), California (25%) and NY (22%).

83% have a driver's license while 88% own cars?

Do you have any data to back up your claim

I don’t see why people think there are so many Muslims. I used to live in CA and I just met a few of them.

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The math of the average response is just insane

gays and lesbians (estimate: 30%, true: 3%),
bisexuals (estimate: 29%, true: 4%), and
Transgender (estimate: 21%, true: 0.6%). 

Leaving 20% for cishetero and everyone else.

Native Americans (estimate: 27%, true: 1%),
Asian Americans (estimate: 29%, true: 6%), and
Black Americans (estimate: 41%, true: 12%).

Leaving 3% for whites and everyone else.

Quick google search should satisfy your curiosity.

Cool, so no, you don't :)

I could believe the first two statistics but the rest is crazy

I have a background in suicidology and talked about something like that briefly. The concept of “suicide awareness” is a bit misguided as people are not aware of issues within their community, not on a national level.

In a survey, people estimated that 20 percent of the population has attempted suicide. It’s actually five percent. But 40 percent said that they personally know someone who has.

Three percent of the population has green eyes. I seriously doubt that 60 percent of people will say that they don’t know anyone with green eyes.