Perception is not the reality, things are not as bad as it seems.

What the Ipsos Mori report on the dangers of perceptions says?

We hear about that quite often. However, complaining is one of the most common habits of Italians. That’s proved by a survey of Ipsos Mori, one of the most reliable research centres in the market, that in 2017 published “Perils of Perception” (The dangers of perception). The research, made in 38 countries in the world, is composed of a series of questions, whose answers highlights how big the gap between people’s perceptions and the real truth is.

Perception is not reality…things are not as bad as it seems. Themes of big matter have been examined, such as the perception of security, migration, unemployment, health, and so on.

Let’s see some examples. On each country, has been asked on a sample of citizens, if they think the number of homicides has risen, decreased, or remained the same from 2000. The majority of those surveyed, in the majority of countries, thinks that it has risen. Actually, the rate of homicides is lowered by 29%.

Here’s another example. Do you think that the rate of homicides caused by terrorism in the last 15 years (after the Twin Towers attack) has risen or reduced compared to 15 years ago (1985-2000)? Many people think that death caused by terrorist attacks decreased, even if that’s the case in the majority of countries involved.

Furthermore, on 100 prisoners in your country, how many of them do you think are born in another country? 36 countries on 38 have overestimated the proportion between prisoners born in their own country and migrants, pointing out a percentage of migrants way higher than the reality.

Questions continue. And the list could go on if we consider other reliable researches such as the one made every year by the Millennium Project named State of the World.  The research develops twenty macro-scenarios such as alphabetisation, the access to running water, the tax of poverty, the access to the internet, the number of countries that abolished the death sentence, or that increased the number of women in Parliament, the number of weaponised conflicts,  and so on. A photograph of how things were 20 years ago, 10 years ago, and a projection of how things will be in 10 years is made. The answer remains the same: the majority of these scenarios are improving.

So…was it really better when it was worse? Maybe we should change this saying into “it was worse when it was worse”

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