This is several years old, but here is a Montrealer's research on the subject:
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So the question is, why are so many people so wrong about something so important? I think there are a number of reasons. One of them is we have better reporting. The Associated Press is a better chronicler of wars over the surface of the Earth than sixteenth-century monks were. There's a cognitive illusion. We cognitive psychologists know that the easier it is to recall specific instances of something, the higher the probability that you assign to it. Things that we read about in the paper with gory footage burn into memory more than reports of a lot more people dying in their beds of old age. There are dynamics in the opinion and advocacy markets: no one ever attracted observers, advocates and donors by saying things just seem to be getting better and better.
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