Soon after the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic, it was clear to many that life was about to be fundamentally altered, possibly irrevocably. Discussions of a “new normal” spread on social media, in the popular press, and in scholarly publications, but it was unclear just what this new normal might look like. Beyond social distancing or working and learning from home, how would COVID-19 change our ways of thinking and behaving? Would depression and loneliness increase, or would people prove resilient and adaptable? Would relationships suffer as couples spent more time together? Would people become more open to cultural change as they were forced to adapt, or would they fall back on tradition and ritual?
In those uncertain early days, pundits, politicians, and celebrities alike offered their predictions and prescriptions. So too did some behavioral and social scientists. For us, a group of scholars who share an interest in understanding how social and behavioral science can best inform public policy, it was a golden opportunity to test just how expert experts are. In a large-scale undertaking beginning last April, we sought to track the extent to which social and behavioral scientists (including social and clinical psychologists, experts in judgments and decision-making, neuroscientists, economists, and political scientists) accurately predicted the impacts of COVID-19 on a set of psychological and behavioral domains—ranging from life satisfaction and loneliness to prejudice and violent crimes—in the United States. We also asked average Americans to make these predictions as well. Half a year later, we assessed the accuracy of these predictions.
