Bias in Self‐Knowledge of Global Communities
Bibliographic Data
| ID | 7150368 |
|---|---|
| Authors | Eleanor B Schille‐Hudson (Department of Psychological and Brain Sciences Indiana University, corresponding author), David Landy (0000-0003-2212-6379, Department of Psychological and Brain Sciences Indiana University) |
| Year | 2025 |
| Volume | 49 |
| Issue | 12 |
| Pages | e70152-e70152 |
| Publication date | 2025-12-01 |
| Peer Reviewed | Yes |
| Open Access | Yes |
| Type | ARTICLE |
| Venue | Cognitive Science (JOURNAL) |
| Journal identifiers | ISSN: 0364-0213 • E-ISSN: 1551-6709 |
| Publisher | Wiley (PUBLISHER • GB) |
| DOI | 10.1111/cogs.70152 |
| PMID | 41442596 |
| OpenAlex | W7117122931 |
| Language | EN |
| References cited | 27 |
Citizens in countries around the world dramatically overestimate the size of minority demographic groups and underestimate the size of majority groups. Media outlets and researchers have concluded that this pattern of errors is a result of characteristics of individual and societal distortions, such as the level of threat the group is imagined to pose and the amount of exposure someone has with the group. More recent work suggests that this error is a direct consequence of the psychological transformation of estimates under uncertainty. However, no work to date has provided an explanation for how distortion and uncertainty might jointly interact to produce people's estimates. The goal of the current paper is to reconcile distortion and uncertainty‐based accounts by providing a model that applies Bayesian inference to incorrect source information (presumed to result from external misinformation, or societal or individual distortions). We then apply that model to a broad set of international survey data and explore the cross‐national structure of misestimation in expressed beliefs across a wide variety of topics. The results suggest that people are overall less and differently impacted by distortions than previous research has found, and that these distortions are often widely shared across quite distinct countries and groups
Bayesian inference · Bayesian probability · Inference · Survey data collection · Cultural Differences and Values · Opinion Dynamics and Social Influence · Social and Intergroup Psychology
On the Shape of the Probability Weighting Function
The Bayesian Lasso
How to Grow a Mind
Categories and particulars
Optimal Predictions in Everyday Cognition
Immigration and the Imagined Community in Europe and the United States
Misinformation and the Currency of Democratic Citizenship
Innumeracy About Minority Populations
Little" and "Big" Pictures in Our Heads
Homophobic Innumeracy
Total Survey Error
Total Survey Error
Systematically Biased Beliefs about Political Influence
Political Ignorance and Collective Policy Preferences
Too Many Immigrants? Examining Alternative Forms of Immigrant Population Innumeracy
Miscounting Race
Beyond innumeracy
Population size, perceived threat, and exclusion
| Citation velocity | historical |
|---|---|
| Highly cited | No |