Research ArticleIlya S. Andreev National Research University "Higher School of Economics", Moscow, Russia isandreev96@gmail.comORCID ID=0000-0001-9127-387XInna F. Deviatko Doctor of Sociology, Professor, National Research University "Higher School of Economics", Moscow, Russia; Institute of Sociology of FCTAS RAS, Moscow, Russia deviatko@gmail.comORCID ID=0000-0002-1955-7592Influence of undirected learning on improving the accuracy of everyday predictions: an experiment in social metacognition. Vestnik instituta sotziologii. 2022. Vol. 13. No. 4. P. 115-129Дата поступления статьи: 07.03.2022Topic: Discussion platform: theoretical thought and empirical searchFor citation: Andreev I. S., Deviatko I. F. Influence of undirected learning on improving the accuracy of everyday predictions: an experiment in social metacognition. Vestnik instituta sotziologii. 2022. Vol. 13. No. 4. P. 115-129DOI: https://doi.org/10.19181/vis.2022.13.4.852. EDN: XUIHSIТекст статьиAbstractThe 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”.Keywordssociology, everyday life, undirected learning, everyday predictions, social metacognition, experimentReferences Deviatko I. F. «Wisdom of сrowds» and «wisdom within»: comparative accuracy of group and individual judgments about discrete social facts. Sotsiologija 4M: metodologija, metody, matematicheskoe modelirovanie, 2012: 34: 81–104 (in Russ.). Deviatko I. F., Abramov R. N., Kozhanov A. A. On limits and nature of descriptive everyday cognition in the social world. Sotsiologicheskie issledovaniya, 2010: 9: 3–17 (in Russ.). Bardhan A., Hicks D., Jaffee D. How responsive is higher education? The linkages between higher education and the labor market. Applied economics, 2013: 45: 10: 1239–1256. DOI: 10.1080/00036846.2011.613801 Bjork R. Assessing Our Own Competence: Heuristics and Illusions. In Attention and Performance XVII. Cognitive Regulation of Performance: Interaction of Theory and Application. Ed. by D. Gopher, A. Koriat. Cambridge, MA, MIT Press, 1999: 435–459. Dunning D., Johnson K., Ehrlinger J., Kruger J. Why people fail to recognize their own incompetence. Current Directions in Psychological Science, 2003: 12: 3: 83–87. DOI: 10.1111/1467-8721.01235 Flavell J. Cognitive development. Englewood Cliffs, NJ, Prentice Hall, 1985: 338. Galton F. Vox Populi. Nature, 1907: 75: 450–451. DOI: 10.1038/075450a0 Griffits T., Tenenbaum J. Optimal predictions in everyday cognition. Psychological Science, 2006: 17: 9: 767–773. DOI: 10.1111/j.1467-9280.2006.01780.x Lewandowsky S., Griffiths T., Kalish M. The wisdom of individuals: exploring people’s knowledge about everyday events using iterated learning. Cognitive Science, 2009: 33: 6: 969–998. DOI: 10.1111/j.1551-6709.2009.01045.x Mozer M., Pashler H., Homaei H. Optimal predictions in everyday cognition: the wisdom of individuals or crowds? Cognitive Science, 2008: 32: 7: 1133–1147. DOI: 10.1080/03640210802353016 Surowiecki J. The Wisdom of crowds: why the many are smarter than the few and how collective wisdom shapes business, economies, societies and nations. London, Little, Brown, 2004: 336. Tran R., Vul E., Pashler H. How effective is incidental learning of the shape of probability distributions? Royal Society Open Science, 2017: 4: 8: 1–9. DOI: 10.1098/rsos.170270 Van Dolder D., Van den Assem M. The wisdom of the inner crowd in three large natural experiments. Nature Human Behaviour, 2018: 2: 1: 21–26. DOI: 10.1038/s41562-017-0247-6 Vul E., Pashler H. Measuring the crowd within: probabilistic representations within individuals. Psychological Science, 2008: 19: 7: 645–647. DOI: 10.1111/j.1467-9280.2008.02136.x Content Vestnik instituta sotziologii. 2022. Vol. 13. No. 4