Defining Shared Perceptions: A Conceptual Framework

The concept at the centre of the institute's work — the shared perception — is used widely and defined rarely. This working paper proposes a working definition: a belief about a state of the world that is held in common across a social group, is treated by its holders as description rather than preference, and is capable of being compared with evidence.

The paper distinguishes shared perceptions from neighbouring concepts — opinion, attitude, value and sentiment — and argues that the distinction matters for measurement: a perception can be wrong in a way an opinion cannot, and the distance between a perception and the evidence is itself a measurable quantity.

As a working paper, this text is published to invite criticism. The definition it proposes will be revised in the light of responses and of the institute's first measurement round.