Did our predictions hold up? Checking our forecasts against real social attitudes

Overview

Paper Summary › Explain Like I'm Five › Conflicts of Interest › Identified Limitations › Rating Explanation › Good to know › Topic Hierarchy › File Information ›

Paper Summary

Paperzilla title

This study uses data from 2017-2020 to test previously made predictions about the trends of implicit and explicit social attitudes. The researchers will use four different forecast accuracy measurements to compare their predictions to the actual collected data. If their initial predictions don't match the collected data, they plan to further explore potential reasons, including major external shocks.

Explain Like I'm Five

Researchers want to check if their previous predictions about social attitudes are correct using data from 2017-2020. They'll compare what they predicted to what actually happened.

Possible Conflicts of Interest

None identified

Identified Limitations

Potential Impact of External Shocks

The authors indicate a potential for alternative hypotheses being correct. While they don't necessarily have specific hypotheses about external shocks, they also aren't ruling out external shocks being significant. The researchers aren't ruling out the potential for large changes due to specific events like the 2016 American election or 2020 pandemic. So, if their predictions turn out to be wrong, they might have some work to do to explain exactly why that happened. This also may cast doubt on the predictive capabilities of their model.

Pre-registration of analysis with already collected data

Pre-registering methodology can make it clearer what to expect from the results. However, this study uses existing collected data, so even pre-registering the exact analysis there's still some risk for flexibility in interpretation since all the information is already at hand. This doesn't completely invalidate their approach but requires readers to carefully consider the authors interpretations.

Rating Explanation

The study is methodologically sound with a pre-registered analysis plan. Using data collected after the initial forecasts adds validity to the hypothesis testing. While the pre-registration is retrospective, it clearly defines the methods and benchmarks, lending credibility to the upcoming analysis. It would be better if it hadn't been retrospective, but it is still well-defined.

Good to know

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Topic Hierarchy

Domain: Social Sciences

Field: Psychology

Subfield: Social Psychology

File Information

Original Title: Patterns of Implicit and Explicit Attitudes IV (#55155)

Uploaded: August 19, 2025 at 02:11 PM

Privacy: Public