Qriously measures sentiment on smartphones

This week we had a look at common misconceptions and their geographical distributions within the US. We did that by asking questions about widely held false beliefs. We also challenged misconceptions regarding the correlation between intellectual aptitude and latitude (i.e. Americans in the South aren’t as bright as Americans in the North). We apologize in advance if this post offends anyone, blah blah blah.

Dinosaurs, Cavemen and Feces

Firstly we asked whether “Early humans were hunting dinosaurs…” was true. As there are around 60 million years between the extinction of the dinosaurs and the first appearance of humans we were a little surprised to learn that 32% of the respondents thought people were using them as a food source.

Inspired by a screening of “Catch me if you can” that some of us recently attended, we wanted to find out if people believe that airplane toilets were voided in mid-air. It turns out that 36% of the smartphone users asked suspect the airlines of polluting our skies with human waste, and to our embarrassment this reflects the average sentiment in our own office as well.

One of the most famous myths that a penny dropped from the Empire State Building would crack your head open was the focus of our last question. After we determined that this is indeed physically impossible, we found out that 55% of the respondents didn’t do this calculation.

Now, having asked those questions we thought it would be interesting to see if another common stereotype: that the South is more intellectually challenged than the North. The hypothesis is that the dumber someone is the more likely he or she would hold these false beliefs. It turns out people in the South are about as dumb or as smart (however you want to interpret the results) as people for the Northern states.

Here are the results by region:

Early humans were hunting dinosaurs…
NORTH: 32.1% True, 67.9% False
SOUTH: 32.2% True, 67.8% False

Do planes empty their toilets in mid-air?
NORTH: 33.1% Yes, 66.9% No
SOUTH: 39.5% Yes, 60.5% No

Thrown down Empire State pennies crack skulls
NORTH: 56.3% Absolutely, 43.7% No way
SOUTH: 53.4% Absolutely, 46.6% No way

…And here is a Gradient of Ignorance from North to South in the US (ordered by latitude). The density of the bands denotes the geographical frequency of  FALSE answers (i.e. affirm a false belief).