> Widespread misperceptions of long-term attitude change
Not "Study: Americans consistently overestimate how much culture has changed." And from the abstract
> Participants overestimated the amount of change on 29 attitudes (57%), underestimated change on 10 attitudes (20%), estimated change in the wrong direction on 10 attitudes (20%), and estimated change correctly on only two attitudes (4%). (out of 51 different attitudes)
Maybe we can change the title. When I read this abstract I got the feeling that Americans just don't know what's going on. Which honestly makes far more sense. Things are changing rapidly recently. It especially makes sense when you consider we're isolating our social groups more (internet makes this easier but isn't a sole contributor) and so there would be a biased estimate for over estimation.
What's also really interesting is that going through some of these is that it seems that people in the 70's greatly underestimated many things. For example when asked about abortion with there was serious risk people estimated (in 72) that only 49% of people were in favor but actually 87% were in favor. Now perception has changed to 71 and actual to 90. Another example is concerns about climate change. In 1990 people estimated 28% were concerned but actually 61% were concerned. Now it is 65.5 vs 65.
If you just came here for the title it really does look like there is a lot more interesting data than what the title says. It does seem like some things we've gotten better at getting estimates on while others are more difficult. Worth at least looking at the figures. But definitely could be some interesting followup analysis.