Abstract
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.
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Notes
Twenty-one respondents identifying as Jewish were removed from the sample.
Other race respondents (n = 28) were dropped due to low numbers and categorical ambiguity.
Unfortunately, given the ambiguity of the term “local community,” it is impossible to determine the true Jewish population size of the area to which each respondent is referring. Thus, I am unable to assess degrees of over or underestimation at the local level.
Principal components factors analysis results suggest that the four items included load highly onto two latent factors reflecting the variable combinations used in the current study (χ2 = 362.67; df = 6).
In addition, I estimated models that use a version of this variable scaled relative to perceptions of wealth among whites. The variable takes the difference between perceived Jewish and white wealth. It contains negative values, indicating that whites have more wealth, positive values, indicating that Jews have more wealth, and zero values, indicating that both groups are equivalent. The significance patterns with this alternative operationalization are similar to those presented.
Since local estimates have slightly more missing cases, the sample sizes in the multivariate portion differ between US and community estimate analyses. I analyzed the likelihood of providing no estimate using logistic regression (not shown). The significance patterns for US estimates suggest that non-response is most common among older respondents, females, and the least educated. Availability is also important as those who watch more television and know Jews personally are more likely to estimate. The lack of availability from which to draw is thought to make respondents more reticent to estimate (Herda 2013). Affect does not associate significantly with the likelihood of non-response. Non-response for community estimates was associated only with age.
I also constructed models that considered Jewish population size estimates relative to analogous perceptions of the white population. This is opposed to the absolute size estimates presented. This alternative formulation follows Alba et al. (2005) and was designed to ameliorate some of the innumeracy relating specifically to respondents’ numerical deficiencies, which should be independent of the group being estimated. In these models the dependent variable was the logged ratio of Jewish population size estimates compared to estimates of the white population. The two estimation outcomes were correlated at around ρ = .8 and the regression results were largely similar to those presented.
The interpersonal contact coefficient reaches significance in the relative estimate model described in footnote 6, marking the only difference in significance patterns across the two operationalizations.
Given the causal ambiguity in the racial attitudes-size perceptions relationship, I also estimated models in which each of the affect heuristics acted as outcomes, while the size perception variables acted as independent variables (not shown). All of the remaining controls were also included in these models. Like the models presented, the association reached significance in the social distance model only, but was negative in direction.
I also estimated a regression model among only the least anti-Semitic respondents (those with the lowest social distance, negative attitudes, or wealthy stereotype scores). The significant social distance coefficient remains, suggesting that those with positive and neutral orientations toward Jews are contributing to the significant pattern on their own and not relative to a group of highly anti-Semitic underestimators.
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Herda, D. Innocuous Ignorance?: Perceptions of the American Jewish Population Size. Cont Jewry 33, 241–255 (2013). https://doi.org/10.1007/s12397-013-9105-7
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s12397-013-9105-7