Exposure to Similar vs. Diverse Perspectives in Forecasting Tournaments on Human Welfare and Societal Change

What are the intra-individual benefits to participating in forecasting tournaments? This paper presents the findings of an empirical study testing how exposure to similar vs. diverse perspectives in forecasting tournaments affects distributions of predictions and estimated ranges, judgmental accuracy, belief updating, and affective polarization. Everyday participants were randomly assigned to one of two conditions—exposure to similar vs. diverse perspectives—and made individual forecasts and rationales for four domains, reviewed similar vs. diverse team forecasts and rationales, optionally updated their individual forecasts and rationales in light of team information, and completed other individual difference assessments. Across domains, (i) there were no significant main effects of perspective, stage, nor their interaction on judgmental accuracy; (ii) participants exposed to similar perspectives updated their predictions more often than did those exposed to diverse perspectives; (iii) participants exposed to similar perspectives rated conservatives more warmly than did those exposed to diverse perspectives (with nonsignificant but directionally consistent results for ratings toward liberals and moderates).