In June 2023, we asked the public in seven countries nine fact questions about refugees. We discovered that, no matter if people wanted more or fewer refugees in their own country, they were equally wrong about the facts.
We have a brand new test with 18 questions related to the UN Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) which we tested on people in four Nordic countries.
In September 2019 we asked eighteen ABC-questions about essential global facts to the public in 31 countries proving that people are systematically wrong about the world.
We asked nine fact questions to the general public in three European countries. The results revealed some staggering misconceptions.
We asked 12 basic fact questions to the general public in fourteen rich countries. Their results were terrible. Chimpanzees would have scored better!
Gapminder conducts misconception studies as part of our efforts to fight global misconceptions and make it possible for everyone to have a fact-based worldview.
Predicting the future is sometimes possible but often very difficult. To succeed we first need an accurate understanding of the present. Most people shape their understanding of the world based on news stories. What gets attention in media are events that are newsworthy by being unusual. Slow trends and big proportions almost never make it to the news. In our studies we have found people are completely wrong about a lot of important things. We do not know the exact origin of all these systematic misconceptions. But we are convinced they distort the global efforts to build a sustainable future. Therefore we will continue hunting them down and disclose them to the public. We hope this will inspire others to investigate them further and do the necessary research to figure out their cultural and psychological origins.
You will find more of our latest studies here soon, stay tuned!