Studies consistently find that people overestimate the share of immigrants in the population. Many Left-wing commentators have taken this as evidence that people are systematically misinformed about immigration, due to ‘disinformation’ from the ‘Right-wing media’. The problem with this argument is that people overestimate the share of all groups that are less than 50% of the population – for reasons that have nothing to do with prejudice or ‘disinformation’.
In a new study, Laurenz Guenther asks people a slightly different question: “How many asylum seekers are there in the country?” (the absolute number, not the share). And he finds that they substantially underestimate the amount. His study reports several other interesting findings. Let’s dig in.
Guenther recruited a broadly representative sample of the German population to complete an online survey concerning immigration (n = 2,104). In addition to the usual demographic questions, respondents were asked, “How many asylum seekers are there in Germany?” They were then assigned randomly to one of three groups: the first group was a control that received no further information, while the second group was informed about the actual number of asylum seekers who are living in Germany. (The third group is less important.) Respondents in the second group were then re-asked, “How many asylum seekers are there in Germany?” to make sure they’d understood the information. Finally, all respondents were asked several questions about their attitudes to immigration.
The chart below plots data from respondents in the second group. Their initial estimates of the number of asylum seekers are shown in blue. Their revised estimates, after being told the true figure, are shown in yellow.
As you can see, there is a dramatic difference between the two distributions. The blue distribution is way further to the left, indicating that respondents’ initial estimates were far too low. (Interestingly, respondents’ revised estimates were too high, rather than being exactly right, suggesting that they may have slightly misunderstood the information they were given.) The median initial estimate was 100,000, whereas the true figure is about a million.
Having established that Germans underestimate the number of asylum seekers in Germany, Guenther looked to see whether correcting their misperceptions would change their attitudes to immigration. He did this by comparing the control group to the second group. His results were somewhat mixed. While those in the second group scored higher on two measures of opposition to immigration, they scored no higher on two measures of support for the AfD. In any case, there was no evidence that people became more supportive of immigration.
Another interesting result from Guenther’s analysis is that respondents were much more opposed to asylum seekers than to other types of immigration. And when he divided them up into four groups based on where they stood on these two broad categories of immigration, he found that people who were opposed to asylum seekers but not to other types were more educated than average. (By contrast, those who were opposed to both broad categories of immigrations were less educated than average.)
Guenther’s study shows that Germans are misinformed about asylum seekers: they think there are many fewer than there actually are. This stands in contrast to the general Left-wing narrative according to which people vastly inflate immigrant numbers thanks to a constant barrage of inflammatory headlines in the Right-wing press. Opposition to asylum seekers, it turns out, isn’t rooted in misperceptions.
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