Number of Immigrants and Religious Minorities Systematically Overestimated

As a number of recent research studies show, there are systematically biased perceptions of basic facts in large parts of the population. This is also true for topics that have been at the center of media and political debate for years, such as immigration. This article summarizes a selection of the research papers published to date that address the biased perceptions of population proportions of religious minorities and immigrants. Papers published to date show that immigrant shares and religious minorities are overestimated by 15% to over 600% relative to actual population shares. The overestimation also varies by different socio-demographic variables, such as gender and educational background.