What proportion of teenage girls give birth each year? Is the murder rate going up or down in your country? Evidence suggests that most of us are very wrong about what goes on in the world around us. Misinformation in the media is a growing worry, but it’s not all about fake news. No matter how impartial we think we are, we’re all biased towards information that confirms what we already believe. To avoid panic and gloom in a ‘post-truth era’, it’s more important than ever to check our facts, challenge our biases, and demand better from our media outlets. Bobby Duffy explains our misperceptions, and assures us that we have more reason for optimism than our misperceptions would have us believe.
Follow Bobby on @BobbyDuffyKings Bobby Duffy is Professor of Public Policy and Director of the Policy Institute at the King’s College London. Formerly Global Director of the Ipsos Social Research Institute, he has worked across most public policy areas in his career, and has also been a part of the Prime Minister’s Strategy Unit and the Centre for Analysis of Social Exclusion (CASE) at the LSE.
His first book, The Perils of Perception, was published by Atlantic books in 2018 and drew on a unique set of global studies on how people misperceive things like immigration levels, crime rates, obesity levels and many more key social realities. Bobby’s new book, Why We’re Wrong about Nearly Everything, will be out this November. This talk was given at a TEDx event using the TED conference format but independently organized by a local community. Learn more at
