Science: Self-Prediction

Can one predict his own behavior 24 hours in advance?

This question was the title of a paper read to the American Sociological Society in Manhattan last week by Professor Pitirim Alexandrovitch Sorokin, head of Harvard's Department of Sociology. Russian-born, bespectacled Dr. Sorokin asked 106 Federal employes to state how much time they would devote to various activities the following day, checked predictions against facts. Findings:

The average person wrongly guessed his time allotment for the following day by a total of five hours. Men were better prophets than women, married people better than single. A steady increase in accuracy of prediction was noted with advancing age. Subjects earning $40 to $50 per week guessed what they would do better than those earning less or more. There was a general tendency to overestimate the time devoted to reading, chatting, cinema and other recreation, and to underestimate that consumed by humdrum activities—sleep, work, rest, transportation, shopping, personal care. Protestants predicted themselves better than Catholics, and Catholics better than Jews, a fact which Dr. Sorokin took to mean that the higher the emotional content of a subject's religion, the less able he is to say what he will do.