Why do even experts often fail to predict major social trends? Prof Dr Igor Grossmann shows that in a three-year forecasting tournament, intellectual humility (recognising that one’s knowledge is limited and that one may be wrong) plays an important role in forecasting accuracy of societal progress.
Across predictions about climate, health, poverty, and conflict, participants higher in intellectual humility updated their views more readily and made more accurate forecasts, even when differences in intelligence, education, ideology, personality, and general knowledge were taken into account. The strongest results appeared when intellectual humility was paired with high reasoning ability: these participants were both more accurate and better calibrated in expressing uncertainty. Written explanations revealed the same pattern. Better forecasters grounded their judgments in prior trends, uncertainty, and evidence-based revision, while poorer forecasters relied more on generalised pessimism. The broader implication is that foresight in complex social domains depends not only on cognitive ability, but also on the willingness to recognise error and revise one’s beliefs.
Speaker bio:
Igor Grossmann is a Professor of Psychology at the University of Waterloo, Editor-in-Chief of Psychological Inquiry, and Associate Editor of American Psychologist. His interdisciplinary research bridges philosophy, anthropology, computer science, economics, and psychology to study human judgment and wisdom. He developed the Common Wisdom Model, exploring how cultural and environmental factors shape decision-making and whether wisdom is a distinct human capacity. Grossmann is advancing the cutting edge of psychological and social sciences by pioneering the use of Large Language Models (LLMs) and Natural Language Processing (NLP) to analyse complex narratives and societal dynamics at scale. He founded the international Wise Judgment Consortium and the Forecasting Collaborative, leveraging these computational techniques to challenge Western-centric views of decision-making. An Elected Council Member of the College of the Royal Society of Canada and recipient of major awards from the APA, APF, APS, and SPSP, he also co-hosts the On Wisdom Podcast and has lead the Futurescape and World-after-COVID initiatives.
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