The major determinants of the prediction of social events.

Abstract

I. THE PROBLEMM ODERN psychological literature reveals no systematic empirical analysis of the factors that influence the predictive judgment. Yet predictions, like any other form of psychological response, are lawfully determined. It is of obvious practical and theoretical importance for psychologists to discover the nature of the major determinants of prediction, and the laws of their operation. The study to be reported in the following pages represents an initial attack upon this problem.Predictions are instances of psychological inferences. Any argument from a premise to a conclusion is an inference, and those that are expressed in the future tense are classified as predictions. The tense in which an inference is expressed is relatively immaterial so far as the nature of the psychological process is concerned.An understanding, not of the determinants of inference, but of the actual course of the process, has been sought at least since the time of Plato. Previous to the beginning of the present century, the most notable experimental attack on this problem was that of the Wiirzburgers (26). Since 1900 there have been many experimental studies of formal and informal reasoning or inference (e.g., 8,12,22,23,29). Though the authors of these studies are by no means agreed concerning the nature of the process of inference, they do seem to agree that (1) generalizations of previous experience are essential, (2) some pre-existent attitude or set is always influential (3) introspective reports do not materially clarify the nature of the phenomenon, and (4) the process is exceedingly complex.While it is seldom explicitly asserted, most experimenters in this field have apparently found that the actual process of infer-• The author wishes to thank the Committee on Research in the Social Sciences of Harvard University for aid in conducting this research 179

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