Quoted: In such cases, people have a hard time gauging what the majority believes because often the minority tends to be very visible and loud, said Dominique Brossard, a professor at the University of Wisconsin-Madison who studies public perception on controversial science, who was not involved in the study.
“We actually use cues around us to make sense of what’s going on,” said Brossard, so if someone lives in a neighborhood that is fairly conservative, they will tend to think more people are conservative than they are.