A Pragmatist's Guide to Using Prediction in the Social Sciences

Prediction is an underutilized tool in the social sciences, often for the wrong reasons. Many social scientists confuse prediction with unnecessarily complicated methods or with narrowly predicting the future. This is unfortunate. When we view prediction as the simple process of evaluating a model’s ability to approximate an outcome of interest, it becomes a more generally applicable and disarmingly simple technique. For all its simplicity, the value of prediction should not be underestimated. Prediction can address enduring sources of criticism plaguing the social sciences, like a lack of assessing a model’s ability to reflect the real world, or the use of overly simplistic models to capture social life. I illustrate these benefits with empirical examples that merely skim the surface of the many and varied ways in which prediction can be applied, staking the claim that prediction is a truly illustrious ‘free lunch’ that can greatly benefit empirical social scientists.