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.

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