The Perils of Perception

GazzaL

Further adding weight to the idea that people haven't got a notion of what's going on around them, the IPSOS Perils of Perception survey is discussed in yesterday's Irish Times: https://www.irishtimes.com/culture/tv-radio-web/irish-people-have-a-distorted-view-of-the-realities-of-their-country-1.4334996

Some highlights are:
Overestimating the housing "crisis"
Overestimating the problems of smoking and binge drinking
Overestimating how much private sector workers earn while underestimating how much glorious public sector workers earn
Underestimating the problem with obesity
Grossly underestimating how many people feel they are happy and in good health

There is also an astounding overestimation that 53% of Irish people use twitter. Anyone with a brain can see that number is far less, and that it is full of extremists and headbangers who have no concept of reality outside of their Twitter echo chamber. Presumably many of these lunatics filled out this survey, hence the mad results.

Poor Uncle Tom

All stats are skewed to push some agenda, 100% of people that are aware of it know that.

Generally all these stats and figures are trotted out to beat sectors of the community down, to keep the herds quiet!

Montage of Feck

Was this a survey of those in the media?

Mad_maxx

GazzaL wrote: »

Further adding weight to the idea that people haven't got a notion of what's going on around them, the IPSOS Perils of Perception survey is discussed in yesterday's Irish Times: https://www.irishtimes.com/culture/tv-radio-web/irish-people-have-a-distorted-view-of-the-realities-of-their-country-1.4334996

Some highlights are:
Overestimating the housing "crisis"
Overestimating the problems of smoking and binge drinking
Overestimating how much private sector workers earn while underestimating how much glorious public sector workers earn
Underestimating the problem with obesity
Grossly underestimating how many people feel they are happy and in good health

There is also an astounding overestimation that 53% of Irish people use twitter. Anyone with a brain can see that number is far less, and that it is full of extremists and headbangers who have no concept of reality outside of their Twitter echo chamber. Presumably many of these lunatics filled out this survey, hence the mad results.

The media eulogize the public sector so it's not surprising so many perceive them to be lower paid, public sector unions are never off RTE spouting propaganda

BrianD3

When people are cold called for these type of surveys, many probably don't give a crap about the answers they give and just want to get the phone call over as quickly as possible (being Irish they are too "polite" to refuse to take the call or to hang up).

Even if they do put thought into the answers, IMO there are very few people who would be close to the correct figure for all of them.

For example, I would not have thought that 81% of people in Ireland listened to the radio yesterday, I would have thought it was much lower.

Wanderer2010

Classic example- Facebook. The majority of people who use it are only showing the glowing, positive, "socially acceptable" highlights of their life and a glance at their posts can make one seem woefully lacking in a lot of areas of their lives like relationships, housing and family.

But nobody posts a picture of them when they are battling daily anxiety, when they are recovering from drug addiction, suicidal thoughts, eating disorders, nobody puts a picture of themselves covered in tears from deep despair from depression or grief or trauma, human conditions that pre-date social media by millennia.

Now words like "all" and "nobody" have to be put into context, as with statistics from any large pool of subject data. No doubt some people who post pics of their perfect lives and beautiful kids birthday parties do have that exact life offline and some people who post their honest thoughts about mental health are battling exactly as they say and dont have an angle. But everything in between is just perception and an illusion...