Sorry, young white men, but you’re not as popular as you may think you are.
In the UK, pollster YouGov ran a series of surveys on public attitudes towards different ethnic, age, and gender groups. To avoid “politically correct” answers, the researchers conducted 48 separate surveys to prevent respondents from being asked to compare groups. They looked at a combination of eight ethnicities, three age groups (20s, 40s, and 60s), and two genders. Respondents were asked to rate the groups on whether they thought they had handful of positive and negative qualities.
In the end, the results found that young white men had the worst reputation of all the 48 groups. The group scored the worst in drunkenness, drug-taking, and sleeping around (they were seen the likeliest to do those things) and bottom in politeness (they were the least likely to be described as such).
Overall, researchers note that most people regard other groups positively on balance, but there were some interesting variations. Gender was the most prominent factor; four of the most praised groups were women, whereas five of the bottom six were men.
Age and ethnicity had a less significant impact on people’s views of different groups, although the reputation of white groups showed the biggest variations—white men and women in their 60s had the two best reputations overall, while white men and women in their 20s had two of the three worst reputations.
Researchers stressed that what they measured were people’s perceptions, which may or may not reflect reality. That said, “too many white children fail at school and become adults ill-equipped to become good workers, husbands and fathers,” YouGov noted.