In GUIDE
Overview
Bobby Duffy is a leading research scientist at Ipsos MORI specializing in understanding public opinion, attitudes, and perception gaps. Over 25 years of research, he has directed large-scale quantitative studies measuring how people's perceptions diverge from measured reality on social and demographic issues.
He is best known for the Perils of Perception study, which surveys 100,000+ individuals across 40 countries on topics like immigration, crime rates, teenage pregnancy, and social media adoption. The research reveals systematic, large-magnitude misestimations (often 2–3× overestimates) and traces them to psychological mechanisms: emotional innumeracy, negativity bias, selective memory, and echo chambers.
Key work
- Perils of Perception Study — Systematic cross-country research on perception gaps between public estimates and measured reality; conducted across 100+ topics and 40+ countries since approximately 2010
- Behavioral explanation of misperception — Applied psychology research documenting emotional innumeracy, negativity bias (drawing on Cacioppo's brain-imaging work), hedonic adaptation, and the "what we see is all that is" effect
- Media effects on perception — Analysis of how media preferences for vivid and unusual content reinforce and amplify perception gaps
- Citizen assemblies and deliberative democracy — Application of perception research to interventions showing people can change their minds when exposed to evidence and dialogue in structured environments
Videos and talks
- How We Create Our Own Fake News — TEDxLiverpool talk on the Perils of Perception, psychological mechanisms of misperception, and media environment effects