Below is your feedback from the individual-differences survey you took before you began participating in the forecasting tournament. These scores reflect how you scored yourself, not how others view you. We collected these measures to look for correlates of accurate forecasters.

We've divided the tests into three broad categories: "Political Knowledge and Orientation," "Personality Tests," and "Brain Teasers." For comparison, we report the mean and standard deviation (SD) of the test scores for all forecasters along with your score for each measure.

Political Knowledge and Orientation

This 35-item true/false test measured general knowledge about political, military, and economic events around the world. Items included "Norway is a major oil-producing country" and "United States runs a large trade surplus vis-à-vis China." We report below the percentage of items that you got correct. This score ranges from 0 to 1.

Calibration and Resolution of Geo-Political Knowledge

To measure the degree to which your beliefs about your political knowledge reflect your actual knowledge, we asked you to rate your confidence that your answers were correct. These questions allow us to find out the extent to which you know what you think you know, a skill that is referred to as calibration. If you got 50% of the items correct and your average confidence rating was 50%, you are perfectly calibrated. If your confidence exceeds the percentage of items you got correct, you were overconfident. If your confidence falls short of the percentage of items you got correct, you were underconfident. Most people tend to be overconfident; this finding holds among experts and novices.

Another skill we examined was your resolution or your ability to assign higher confidence ratings to items you got correct than to items you got incorrect. This skill reflects your ability to discriminate between things you know and things you don’t know.

Political Orientation

We asked a series of questions to measure your political perspectives. Those included items reflecting liberal versus conservative ideology. For example, an item scored as reflecting a liberal ideology was "Governments should routinely intervene in the economy to achieve fairer outcomes" and one reflecting a conservative ideology was "Free markets function well with minimal government intervention. Scores ranged from 1 to 7 where 1 = Liberal Views, 4 = Neutral, and 7 = Conservative Views.

We also measured your tendency to endorse realism versus institutionalism. An item scored as measuring realism was "World politics remains a jungle in which (to quote Thucydides) the strong do what they will and the weak accept what they must." And an item measuring institutionalism was "International institutions increasingly constrain the conduct of nation-states." Scores ranged from 1 to 7, where 1 = Realist, 4 = Neutral, and 7 = Institutionalist.

PERSONALITY TESTS

Openness from the Neo "Big 5"

The NEO "Big 5" is a personality inventory designed to measure what has commonly been referred to as the "Big 5" Personality Dimensions. We took questions from one dimension – Openness. People who score high on the Openness dimension tend to have active imaginations, aesthetic sensitivity, variety-seeking, intellectual curiosity, and independence of judgment. Open individuals are curious about both inner and outer worlds. They are willing to entertain novel ideas and unconventional values, and they experience both positive and negative emotions more keenly. Items include " I do a thorough job" and "I persevere until the task is finished." Scores range from 1 to 7, where 1 = Less Open and 7 = More Open.

Need for Cognition

Need for cognition refers to an individual’s tendency to engage in and enjoy effortful cognitive endeavors. Research on need for cognition suggests that this characteristic is predictive of the manner in which people deal with tasks and social information. Items included "I would prefer complex to simple problems" and "I like the responsibility of handling a situation that requires a lot of thinking." Scores range from 1 = Low Need for Cognition to 7 = High Need for Cognition.

Need for Closure

Need for closure has been described as "the desire for a definite answer on a topic and the avoidance of confusion and ambiguity." The need for closure reflects different models of processing information and differential susceptibility to persuasion. Items included "It is annoying to listen to someone who cannot seem to make up his or her mind" and "I prefer interacting with people whose opinions are very different from my own" (reverse coded). Scores ranged from 1 = Low Need for Closure to 7 = High Need for Closure.

Hedgehog versus Fox

This scale captures a distinction made famous by Isaiah Berlin: Hedgehogs know one big thing, while foxes know many little things. Items included "When I ground my thinking in sound principles, I find that seemingly unpredictable phenomena often become predictable consequences of deeper principles" (coded for hedgehog) and "I often step outside my preferred framework and look at events from other perspectives" (coded for fox). Scores range from 1 to 7, where 1 = Fox and 7 = Hedgehog.

BRAIN TEASERS

Test of Spatial Orientation

The Test of Spatial Orientation is composed of a series of perceptual analytic reasoning problems. Scores range from 0 to 12. This test measures spatial abilities.

Cognitive Reflection Test

Many researchers have emphasized the distinction between two types of cognitive processes: those executed quickly with little conscious deliberation and those that are slower and more reflective. This test measures the tendency to reflect on questions. Consider the problem, "A bat and a ball cost $1.10. The bat costs $1 more than the ball. How much does the ball cost? ___cents." There is an intuitive answer that comes to mind quickly: 10 cents. But someone who stops and reflects on the problem will realize that the correct answer is 5 cents. Scores on this test range from 0 to 3 correct items.

Other: Views on Forecasting

We asked you a few questions about what causes forecasting ability. Items included "Forecasting skills depend mostly on practice, training and careful analysis of the underlying causes of previous failures and successes," " Forecasting skills depend mostly on innate ability that people either have or don’t have, " and "Forecasting skills depend mostly on luck (coincidences in which hunches and preconceptions just happen to correspond to reality for a stretch of time)." Research in other domains suggests that people who believe that successful completion of a task is more likely to be a learned skill than an innate ability tend to perform better on that task. Scores on each question ranged from 0 = Completely Disagree, 5 = Neutral, and 10 = Completely Agree.