Insights into accuracy of social scientists' forecasts of societal change

Grossmann, Igor; Rotella, Amanda; Hutcherson, Cendri A.; Sharpinskyi, Konstantyn; Varnum, Michael E.W.; Achter, Sebastian; Dhami, Mandeep K.; Guo, Xinqi Evie; Kara-Yakoubian, Mane; Mandel, David R.; Raes, Louis; Tay, Louis; Vie, Aymeric; Wagner, Lisa; Adamkovic, Matus; Arami, Arash; Arriaga, Patrícia; Bandara, Kasun; Baník, Gabriel; Bartoš, František; Baskin, Ernest; Bergmeir, Christoph; Białek, Michał; Børsting, Caroline K.; Browne, Dillon T.; Caruso, Eugene M.; Chen, Rong; Chie, Bin-Tzong; Chopik, William J.; Collins, Robert N.; Cong, Chin W.; Conway, Lucian G.; Davis, Matthew; Day, Martin V.; Dhaliwal, Nathan A.; Durham, Justin D.; Dziekan, Martyna; Elbaek, Christian T.; Shuman, Eric; Fabrykant, Marharyta; Firat, Mustafa; Fong, Geoffrey T.; Frimer, Jeremy A.; Gallegos, Jonathan M.; Goldberg, Simon B.; Gollwitzer, Anton; Goyal, Julia; Graf-Vlachy, Lorenz; Gronlund, Scott D.; Hafenbrädl, Sebastian; Hartanto, Andree; Hirshberg, Matthew J.; Hornsey, Matthew J.; Howe, Piers D.L.; Izadi,...

Abstract

How well can social scientists predict societal change, and what processes underlie their predictions? To answer these questions, we ran two forecasting tournaments testing accuracy of predictions of societal change in domains commonly studied in the social sciences: ideological preferences, political polarization, life satisfaction, sentiment on social media, and gender-career and racial bias. Following provision of historical trend data on the domain, social scientists submitted pre-registered monthly forecasts for a year (Tournament 1; N=86 teams/359 forecasts), with an opportunity to update forecasts based on new data six months later (Tournament 2; N=120 teams/546 forecasts). Benchmarking forecasting accuracy revealed that social scientists’ forecasts were on average no more accurate than simple statistical models (historical means, random walk, or linear regressions) or the aggregate forecasts of a sample from the general public (N=802). However, scientists were more accurate if they had scientific expertise in a prediction domain, were interdisciplinary, used simpler models, and based predictions on prior data.

Citation

Grossmann, I., Rotella, A., Hutcherson, C. A., Sharpinskyi, K., Varnum, M. E., Achter, S., …Collaborative, T. F. (2023). Insights into accuracy of social scientists' forecasts of societal change. Nature Human Behaviour, 7(4), 484-501. https://doi.org/10.1038/s41562-022-01517-1

• Journal Article Type: Article
• Acceptance Date: Nov 24, 2022
• Online Publication Date: Feb 9, 2023
• Publication Date: 2023-04
• Deposit Date: Nov 28, 2022
• Publicly Available Date: Aug 10, 2023
• Journal: Nature Human Behaviour
• Publisher: Nature Research
• Peer Reviewed: Peer Reviewed
• Volume: 7
• Issue: 4
• Pages: 484-501
• DOI: https://doi.org/10.1038/s41562-022-01517-1
• Public URL: https://durham-repository.worktribe.com/output/1187810