Influence of undirected learning on improving the accuracy of everyday predictions: an experiment in social metacognition

Abstract

The article presents the results of a sociological experiment that allowed to take a fresh look at the live issue of how people are able to learn the evaluation of the parameters of the distributions of certain important social variables and assimilate probabilistic generative models of the surrounding reality in the process of implicit non-directed learning that takes place in everyday life. The article shows that the observed effects of episodic learning can be influenced by implicit (background) knowledge about local realities (in this particular case, Russian ones). The authors also found that a number of other factors can also influence the effects of learning: everyday social interactions in a particular region or city, a format for presenting examples that is close to experience. An increase in the accuracy of the forecasts made can also be a consequence of the possibility of extrapolating easily remembered data. The data obtained as a result of the experiment allow us to conclude that the initial "illusion of awareness", discovered earlier and described in the previous works of the authors, is not associated with the metacognitive ability to regulate one's judgments based on the obtained imitation of episodic (situational) "everyday experience”.