Perils of Perception

Perceptions are not reality: things are NOT as bad as they seem

Ipsos’ latest Perils of Perception survey highlights how wrong the online public across 38 countries are about key global issues and features of the population in their country.

View the slides

This is the latest slide deck from Perils of Perception 2017. This includes findings from 38 countries and an updated Misperceptions Index.

Go to the slides

Take the quiz

Do you know which nation consumes the most alcohol? Or do you know how many people own a smartphone in your country? Take the quiz and compare your knowledge and accuracy to people all over the world in the Ipsos Perils of Perception Quiz.

Go to the quiz

Visit the archive

We’ve been conducting work on public misperceptions for several years now. From military facts to personal finances we have a wealth of fascinating data which you can explore here.

Go to the archive

Perceptions are not reality

Across all 38 countries in the 2017 study, each population gets a lot wrong. We are often most incorrect on factors that are widely discussed in the media, such as the murder rate and the number of people who die from terrorist attacks each year. We know from previous studies that this is partly because we over-estimate what we worry about.

But in this new study we also show that we’re often unduly pessimistic about how healthy people are, as well as overestimating how connected they are to technology.

The intention here is to showcase our findings on the gap between perception and reality and to examine why people around the world are so wrong about basic facts about their population. For the full results of the survey and information on the sources for the actual data, click here.

Bobby Duffy
Managing Director, Ipsos Public Affairs
Bobby.Duffy@ipsos.com