As they disembarked from the 2021 rollercoaster, we asked the public what they were expecting to happen in 2022. This survey not only tells us what the Irish public are expecting, but also compares these predictions to those made across 33 other countries.
Hope springs eternal, and the vast majority predicts that 2022 will be a better year than the one we have left behind. Fourth from bottom in terms of 2021 being a bad year and fourth from top in optimism about 2022, Ireland is certainly in an upbeat mood.
But all is not rosy. More than three-quarters of Irish people expect more extreme weather events this year. An even larger proportion expects prices to rise faster than incomes.
Some surprising results too. The standout perhaps is that a majority expect to see the election of Ireland’s first female taoiseach. Highly unlikely, but that would certainly make for a dramatic year on the political front.
Of course, these predictions all come with one major caveat: people are terrible at predicting the future.
Not just the public, but experts too. From wildly inaccurate predictions about the economy or election results, through to anticipating that cars and television were both short-term fads that wouldn’t stand the test of time. History is littered with terrible predictions by well-respected experts.
But why are we so bad at predicting the future? Predictions are built upon our understanding of the world around us. Unfortunately, these foundations are pretty shoddy.
Misunderstanding
The Ipsos Perils of Perception study in 2020 demonstrated the extent to which the Irish public commonly misunderstands the world around them. From health and happiness to economy and wealth, many of our perceptions are far removed from the reality.
Respondents on that 2020 poll estimated that 55 per cent of people in Ireland were generally happy with their life. This is way short of the reality of 86 per cent that felt content back then.
People are typically happier than we think they are, so perhaps we shouldn’t be so surprised that the majority feel that 2021 wasn’t too bad for them personally.
Making predictions is also quite difficult, particularly for a survey respondent hit by a rapid-fire list of predictions. As with most decisions, people take shortcuts to quickly and easily reach an answer. These shortcuts mainly serve us pretty well, but sometimes lead us along the wrong path.
One of these shortcuts is a natural predisposition towards optimism. Optimism is clearly evident throughout the results of this survey – particularly in Ireland. We naturally think that the future will be better than the present. In many respects it often is, however, this bias frequently needs to be restrained.
Without this optimism bias we probably wouldn’t follow sports teams. Every season starts with optimism, only for it to end in disappointment for most. No one understands this better than the Mayo football supporter. Maybe this will finally be their year – 47 per cent in this survey think it will.
Continuing the sports theme to see where optimism can take us down the wrong path. Take, for example, the 44 per cent of Chinese citizens in this global survey who expected that China will win the football World Cup this year. Disappointment already for many of them as they didn’t even qualify.
More seasoned football supporters take a more realistic view of things. However, despite a relatively successful 2021 the British are notably pessimistic about England’s chances, with 22 per cent expecting the Three Lions to triumph in Qatar.
Straight-line instinct
Our predictions are often based on a straight-line instinct. This is a mistaken belief that the trends we are seeing today will just continue on the same path into the future.
The reality is that change rarely follows a straight line, but is more likely to ebb and flow.
These survey results provide evidence of the shortcomings of thinking in a straight line. When fieldwork was undertaken during November we seemed to be on a clear path towards an easing of restrictions and a return to normality. No reason to expect then that we would be thrown so far off course. That was long before “omicron” was added to our lexicon and wreaked havoc.
Clearly not all these predictions will come to pass. Nor should we expect them to. At this point we can only hope that the prediction that 2022 is better than 2021 is the most accurate one.
It won’t be until the World Cup wraps up in December that we will find out which prediction was more accurate – Sam Maguire taking up residence in Castlebar or football finally “coming home” to England. History suggests it will be neither.
Kieran O’Leary is a director of Ipsos MRBI
