Integrating the Accuracy and Time Dimension of Foresight

Judgmental forecasting research has demonstrated that forecasters differ in their foresight––their ability to consistently forecast future states of the world accurately. However, the conceptualization of foresight underlying this research stream focuses exclusively on accuracy and thereby, neglects the time dimension of foresight. We develop a reconceptualization of foresight that integrates the dimensions of accuracy and time. To provide the theoretical basis for this integration, we propose a forecasting framework suggesting that forecasting future states of the world becomes easier over time as the availability of signals, which enable forecasters to forecast future states of the world more accurately, increases over time. Therefore, we reconceptualize foresight as the ability to forecast future states of the world accurately and early. To operationalize this reconceptualization of foresight in forecasting tournaments, we propose the time-weighted Brier score (TWBS), which weights errors made closer to the event horizon more heavily. We prove analytically that the TWBS is a strictly proper scoring rule that represents a mathematical generalization of the Brier score (BS). Furthermore, we show in a simulation study that the linear and square root TWBS, which weight the forecast errors over time heavier according to the linear and square root function, measure the true foresight of persons better than the BS under various theoretical signal trajectories. Taken together, we contribute to the emergent literature on foresight by providing a theoretical framework, reconceptualization, and generalized operationalization of foresight that integrate the dimensions of accuracy and time.