Ciência_Iscte
Publications
Publication Detailed Description
Insights into the accuracy of social scientists’ forecasts of societal change
Journal Title
Nature Human Behaviour
Year (definitive publication)
2023
Language
English
Country
United Kingdom
More Information
Web of Science®
Scopus
Google Scholar
This publication is not indexed in Overton
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 the 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. After we provided them with historical trend data on the relevant domain, social scientists submitted pre-registered monthly forecasts for a year (Tournament 1; N = 86 teams and 359 forecasts), with an opportunity to update forecasts on the basis of new data six months later (Tournament 2; N = 120 teams and 546 forecasts). Benchmarking forecasting accuracy revealed that social scientists’ forecasts were on average no more accurate than those of simple statistical models (historical means, random walks 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.
Acknowledgements
--
Keywords
Forecasting,Expert judgment,Well-being,Political polarization,Prejudice,Meta-science
Fields of Science and Technology Classification
- Psychology - Social Sciences
Contributions to the Sustainable Development Goals of the United Nations
With the objective to increase the research activity directed towards the achievement of the United Nations 2030 Sustainable Development Goals, the possibility of associating scientific publications with the Sustainable Development Goals is now available in Ciência_Iscte. These are the Sustainable Development Goals identified by the author(s) for this publication. For more detailed information on the Sustainable Development Goals, click here.