Innocuous Ignorance?: Perceptions of the American Jewish Population Size.

The current study examines the extent and correlates of ignorance regarding the size of the American Jewish population. Using the 2000 General Social Survey, I examine how large the non-Jewish respondents perceive the Jewish population to be in both the country as a whole and in their local community. Individuals of all backgrounds are found to express high levels of Jewish population innumeracy, with the vast majority overestimating. I then attempt to understand variation in estimates using hypotheses based on heuristic decision-making. Larger size estimates at the country level are most often associated with media exposure, gender, and education. At the community level, larger estimates are related most strongly to interpersonal contact with Jews. Surprisingly, size estimates are largely unrelated to stereotypes or negative attitudes toward Jews. This unique finding suggests that, contrary to the existing literature, inflated perceptions are not uniformly problematic for intergroup relations. Rather, innumeracy regarding US Jews appears to be largely innocuous and without basis in anti-Semitism. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]