Judgemental probability forecasts for personal and impersonal events

This paper reports the results of empirical tests of psychological hypotheses concerning the influence of perceived controllability and desirability on response and performance measures of judgemental forecasts. Subjects were required to estimate, for the imminent four-week period, the likelihoods of occurrence of personal events for themselves and their peers and general world events. The authors find that the two factors studied have varying, but predictable, influences on the three types of forecast and that individual differences in forecasting behaviour and reliability show some evidence of consistency.