Societal Change and Wisdom: Insights from the World after Covid Project
How will the world change as a result of the Covid-19 pandemic? What can people do to best adapt to the societal changes ahead? To answer these questions, over the course of the summer-fall 2020 we launched the World After COVID Project, interviewing more than 50 of the world’s leading scholars in the behavioral and social sciences, including fellows of national academies and presidents of major scientific societies. Experts independently shared their thoughts on what effects the COVID-19 pandemic will have on our societies and provided advice for successful response to new challenges and opportunities. Using mixed-method and natural language processing analyses, we distilled and analyzed these predictions and suggestions, observing a diversity of scenarios. Results also show that half of the experts approach their post-Covid predictions dialectically, highlighting both positive and negative features of the same prediction. Moreover, prosocial goals and meta-cognition—two chief tenants of the Common Wisdom model—were evident in their recommendations for how to cope with possible changes. The project provides a time capsule of experts’ predictions during major societal changes. We discuss implications for strengthening focus on prediction (vs. mere explanation) in psychological science as well as the value of uncertainty and dialecticism in forecasting.