Sociology Commons^™

Teaching Demographic Ignorance With The Correcting Misperceptions Exercise: A Replication And Extension Of Previous Research, Daniel Herda

Numeracy

Existing research from the social sciences indicates that misperceptions about immigrants are pervasive in American society and present consequences for intergroup relations. The classroom may be an arena in which to reduce this incorrectness. The current note provides a replication and extension of previous research on the effectiveness of the Correcting Misperceptions Exercise (CME) ─ an in-class demographic guessing game in which students provide their perceptions of some demographic reality and compare it to an objective data source. This analysis builds upon earlier work by 1) considering immigrants as a new demographic category of focus; 2) simultaneously analyzing cardinal misperceptions …