Duplicate this page before you start, and write all your answers in your own copy.
Last lesson you found that a whole room can agree and still be wrong. Today asks why intelligent people's mistakes so often lean the same way, and whose job it is to catch them.
Take the Gapminder 2017 test on your own. Answer every question; do not look anything up. Do not talk, and do not look at anyone else's screen.
✍️ Write here: your score, and the question you were most sure you had right but got wrong. How sure were you, from 1 (a guess) to 5 (certain)?
The first twelve questions each have three options, so someone picking at random would get about four of them right. In 2017 Gapminder had polling companies put those twelve questions to more than 12,000 adults in 14 countries, among them Germany, France, Spain and Great Britain. The average score was 2.2 out of 12. Only 10% did better than random guessing, and 15% got every question wrong. Hans Rosling, who founded Gapminder, liked to point out that chimpanzees choosing between bananas marked A, B and C would beat almost everyone.
Gapminder, "Gapminder Misconception Study 2017," accessed 4 October 2026, https://www.gapminder.org/studies/gms/.
✍️ Before you read on, write here: why do you think so many intelligent people, perhaps including you, get these questions wrong? Give at least three reasons.
Now compare what you wrote with this.
Hans Rosling (1948–2017), the Swedish doctor and professor of international health who founded Gapminder, in 2016. Wikimedia Commons. Source
Rosling did not think the problem was a lack of information. In Factfulness (2018), written with his son Ola Rosling and daughter-in-law Anna Rosling Rönnlund, he argued that ten instincts push us towards a more dramatic picture of the world than the data show. The table pairs each instinct with biases that psychologists have named.
Hans Rosling, Ola Rosling and Anna Rosling Rönnlund, Factfulness: Ten Reasons We're Wrong About the World, and Why Things Are Better Than You Think (London: Sceptre, 2018).
| Factfulness instinct | Cognitive bias | Real example |
|---|---|---|
| Gap instinct | In-group/out-group bias, binary thinking | "East vs. West", "rich vs. poor countries" |
| Negativity instinct | Availability heuristic, negativity bias | News coverage makes the world seem worse than it is |
| Straight line instinct | Linear projection bias | "Population will keep growing forever" |
| Fear instinct | Risk perception bias | Fear of flying vs. driving statistics |
| Size instinct | Denominator neglect | "100 deaths!" (out of what population?) |
| Generalization instinct | Stereotyping, confirmation bias | Assuming all African countries are similar |
| Destiny instinct | Essentialism, status quo bias | "Culture X will always be like this" |
| Single perspective instinct | Confirmation bias, tunnel vision | Only reading news from one viewpoint |
| Blame instinct | Fundamental attribution error | Blaming individuals vs. systems |
| Urgency instinct | Action bias, present bias | "We must act NOW without data" |
