PERILS OF PERCEPTION

Take a minute to answer these questions - what's the average number of sexual partners? What proportion of your country are immigrants? What does it cost to raise a child? Do you think teenage girls are getting pregnant at an alarming rate or that a large percentage of the prison population are immigrants? This brilliant investigation by the Head of Ipsos Mori Social Research Institute analyses the role of social media and fact-checking in this post-truth age. In the final chapter he gives a list of ten useful things we can do to manage ourselves. Brexit and Donald Trump, Facebook, Google, climate change, educational levels, political misdirection and disengagement, wishful and wrongful thinking, filtering our worlds, he looks at worldwide worry and how we should manage our misperceptions. With useful statistics and questions and answers, graphs and pie charts, in these days when we probably no longer trust the clergy, then journalists and least of all politicians, can we trust our own education and perception? Much food for thought. 304pp in paperback.