{"pk":27736,"title":"Bias in the Self-Knowledge of Global Communities","subtitle":null,"abstract":"A plethora of research over the past two decades has\ndemonstrated that citizens in countries around the world\ndramatically overestimate the size of minority demographic\ngroups and underestimate the size of majority groups.\nResearchers have concluded that this misestimation is a result\nof characteristics of the group being estimated, such as level of\nthreat the group poses and the amount of exposure someone\nhas with to the group. However, explanations of this\nmisestimation have largely ignored theoretical models of\nperception and measurement, such as those developed in\nclassic psychophysics. This has led to interpretations that are\nat variance with modern theories of measurement. We present\na model which combines an understanding of the nature of\nhuman estimations with a conceptualization of uncertainty,\nwhich extends to accommodate bias. We apply this model to\nthree large-scale datasets collected by the Ipsos MORI research\ngroup. Model fits from our approach suggest that to a\nconsiderable degree, the errors people make are due to\nuncertainty rather than bias. These biases are quite different in\ncharacter from those that other groups have reported. Many of\nthe present biases, furthermore, are shared widely across\ndifferent countries.","language":"eng","license":{"name":"","short_name":"","text":null,"url":""},"keywords":[{"word":"Demographic perception"},{"word":"psychophysics"},{"word":"Bias"},{"word":"uncertainty"},{"word":"proportional reasoning"},{"word":"numeric reasoning"}],"section":"Publication-based-Talks","is_remote":true,"remote_url":"https://escholarship.org/uc/item/8820z15k","frozenauthors":[{"first_name":"Eleanor","middle_name":"","last_name":"Bower","name_suffix":"","institution":"Indiana University","department":""},{"first_name":"David","middle_name":"","last_name":"Landy","name_suffix":"","institution":"Indiana University","department":""}],"date_submitted":null,"date_accepted":null,"date_published":"2018-01-01T18:00:00Z","render_galley":null,"galleys":[{"label":"PDF","type":"pdf","path":"https://journalpub.escholarship.org/cognitivesciencesociety/article/27736/galley/17376/download/"}]}