Psychohistory

A branch of anthropology using statistical models to predict the behavior of human social groups. Invented by noted genius Reed Richards. Psychohistory is the mathematical study of the reactions of human conglomerates in response to economic and social stimuli. A discipline combining history, sociology, anthropology and mathematical statistics to make general predictions about the future behavior of very large groups of people.

Reed experimented and refined this process initially by gaming the stock market, being just successful enough to make money reliably without attracting the attention of international regulatory groups. This success led him to develop models for larger human populations. He has successfully applied the psychohistorical model to include the impact on humanity from spacefaring civilizations as well.

A critical aspect of this branch of study is that it only applies to a sufficiently large group of people, and said subjects cannot be aware they are part of the observational group.