Diep, Peter2025-08-202025-08-202025-08-202025-08-18https://hdl.handle.net/10012/22215Understanding where society is headed requires a clear grasp of where it has been, to make sense of what factors shape direction of societal change. Yet during periods of heightened uncertainty, such as the COVID-19 pandemic, most people struggle to accurately perceive the direction of societal shifts. In this thesis, I used the first year of the COVID-19 pandemic as a naturalistic context of uncertainty to investigate how the public estimated societal change during such volatile periods, what domains may have been more accurately perceived, and what individual factors may have shaped this accuracy. U.S. participants (N = 644) estimated societal change across thirteen domains over six-month (April-October 2020) and one-year periods (April 2020-April 2021), either via free-text or on a -50% to +50% slider, providing their confidence for their estimates per domain. Next, they completed measures assessing general knowledge, confidence in their knowledge judgments, and metacognitive engagement (e.g., reflecting on limits of one’s knowledge when discussing social issues). I further assessed deliberation-related engagement by tracking time spent on each estimation. Results showed that Americans held a largely pessimistic view of societal changes over the pandemic, especially when considering actual change in the domains of depression rates, mortality, violent crimes, unemployment, and charitable donations. Out of all domains, the majority of the sample correctly estimated the direction of societal change for depression rates, life satisfaction, explicit prejudice, charitable giving, and religiosity. However, for other domains participants were either at chance or got the direction of change wrong. Participants were also more accurate in estimation of change for shorter (vs. longer) time frames, and when using open-ended response options (vs. percentage-based slider). Moreover, individuals showing greater task deliberation, metacognitive engagement, and confidence in their estimates, but not greater general knowledge or calibration in confidence and accuracy of their knowledge, were more accurate. Additionally, effects of knowledge calibration and deliberation varied as a function of domain, either improving estimates or increasing error or bias. These findings suggest that how people engage with information matters more than simply what they know. The thesis concludes by discussing implications for understanding public perceptions of pandemic-related societal changes and identifies factors that may help align these perceptions with actual social trends.enretrospectionestimationsocietal changeindividual differencesmetacognitionMaster Thesis