What is predictive testing?

Predictive testing is a concept in personal epistemology: If your schema is correct it should make accurate predictions about what will happen next.

Example: You believe that your colleague resists new ideas because she is risk-averse. If this schema is correct, it should predict specific behaviors: she will push back on any proposal that lacks precedent, she will favor incremental changes over large ones, and she will ask for data before committing to anything unfamiliar. You write these predictions down. Over the next month, you observe that she resists proposals from certain people but enthusiastically backs equally risky ideas from others. Your predictions failed — not because she is unpredictable, but because your schema was wrong. She is not risk-averse. She has a trust filter. The prediction failures did not just reveal inaccuracy. They pointed directly at the flaw.

This concept is part of Phase 15 (Schema Validation) in the How to Think curriculum, which builds the epistemic infrastructure for schema validation.