Description
Why do people spend so much time thinking about the future, imagining scenarios that may never occur, and making (often unrealistic) predictions ? This volume brings together leading researchers from multiple psychological subdisciplines to explore the central role of future-thinking in human behavior across the lifespan. It presents cutting-edge work on the mechanisms involved in visualizing, predicting, and planning for the future. Implications are explored for such important domains as well-being and mental health, academic and job performance, ethical decision making, and financial behavior. Throughout, chapters highlight effective self-regulation strategies that help people pursue and realize their short- and long-term goals.
Chapter
1.
Future‑Thinking: A Historical Perspective
2. Future‑Thinking in Animals: Capacities and Limits
3.
Varieties of Future‑Thinking
4. Future‑Thinking in Young Children: How Do We Measure It and How Can We Optimize It?
6.
Counterfactual Thinking
7.
Fantasy about the Future as Friend and Foe
Part II. Beliefs and Judgments
8.
Expectations in the Academic Domain
10.
Positive Future‑Thinking, Well‑Being, and Mental Health
12.
Fluctuations in Future Outlooks: Unrealistic Optimism and Pessimism in Outcome Predictions
13.
A Neuroeconomist’s Perspective on Thinking about the Future
14.
Anticipated Regret: A Prospective Emotion about the Future Past
15.
Thinking about the Future: A Construal Level Theory Perspective
16. Perceiving Future Time across Adulthood
Part III. Goals and Plans
17.
Planning Out Future Action, Affect, and Cognition
18. Mindsets Change the Imagined and Actual Future
19.
Long‑Range Thinking and Goal‑Directed Action
20. The Effect of Priming Goals on Organizational‑Related Behavior: My Transition from Skeptic to Believer
21.
The Forward Rush: On Locomotors’ Future Focus
22.
Where I Ideally Want to Be versus Where I Ought to Be: Regulatory Focus and the Future
23. To Approach or to Avoid: Integrating the Biopsychosocial Model of Challenge and Threat with Theories from Affective Dynamics and Motivation Science
24. Anticipating and Overcoming Unethical Temptation
25.
The Road to Hell: An Overview of Research on the Intention–Behavior Gap
26.
Multiple Processes in Prospective Memory: Exploring the Nature of Spontaneous Retrieval
The Psychology of Thinking about the Future
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