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Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin

39(4)

restores people’ s sense of control (Rutjens, van Harreveld, & van der Pligt, 2010) and alleviates death anxiety (Rutjens, van der Pligt, & van Harreveld, 2009). Furthermore, people experience negative emotions when they believe their ethnic group’s future is under threat through losing their cultural identity/practic es (Wohl, Branscombe, & Reysen, 2010), or from becoming a minority (Outten, Schmitt, Miller, & Garcia, 2012). While existing research has focused on the emotional implications of thinking about the future of groups, one of the most important implications of thoughts about the future is in guiding and motivating current action (Gilbert & Wilson, 2007; Suddendorf, 2006). Our research program focuses on these

motivational

implications of thinking about society’s future, aligning it closely to Chomsky’s claim. That is, are people’s projections about the future of society related to their attitudes and actions in the present, such as voting intentions or political activism, which would promote or p revent that future occurring? A second major difference lies in our focus on the

content

of projections about future society—identifying how people think society will change in the future, and determining which dimen- sions of change are related to current attitudes and behav- iors. This content spans both changes in people themselves (e.g., stereotypical traits and values) and changes in broader society (e.g., crime and technolo gical progress). A third dif- ference is that we examine beliefs about the future of soci- ety across diverse contexts, such as where climate change is prevented, where marijuana is legalized, or where athe- ism becomes dominant, with an aim to identify

context- general

relationships between beliefs about society’s future and current attitudes/actions. We propose a framework for examining these societal projections, which we call “col- lective futures.”

The “Collective Futures” Framework

Figure 1 describes our framework relating beliefs about the future of society to present-day attitudes and actions. Some contexts involve different social policies (e.g., legalizing marijuana, relaxing abortion laws, acting on climate change), while others may reflect intergroup relations such as changes in group status relative to others—what Turner and col- leagues have called “cognitive alternatives” (Tajfel & Turner, 1986; Turner & Brown, 1978). Thus, people imagine a future state of society where a proposed change has occurred (e.g., where marijuana has been legalized, or where atheists have become a majority). In each context, people think about how that future soci- ety would be different from today . These projections include (a) broad societal change, including the extent of societal dysfunction (e.g., crime) and societal development (e.g., technological progress); and (b) changes in the character of people, including stereotypical tr aits and values. The third part of the collective futures framework relates these projections about future society to present-day atti- tudes and behaviors that would promote or prevent this future society occurring. Here we focus on political behav- iors such as voting intentions, political activities, and sup- porting religion playing a role i n government deci sions.

Dimensions of Collective Futures Beliefs

The core of the collective futures framework lies in the pro- jections people make about society in the future. This focus might initially appear futile because the future entails unbounded possibilities, so projections would be highly diverse, opaque, or incoherent (Tonn, Hemrick, & Conrad, 2006), and with substantial contextual variation. For exam- ple, very different images of a future American society may be invoked when considering legalizing marijuana com- pared with becoming a rel igious theocracy . Nonetheless, we propose that people are able to make judgments on some basic dimensions about future societies that are likely to be relevant across contexts, including changes in broad societal factors (societal dysfunction and development) and changes in people’s character (their traits or values). As collective futures are about society, society-wide changes are particularly relevant. We focused initially on sociological problems, like crime, poverty, and disease (“societal dysfunction”), as these represent major concerns of national governments and international bodies such as the United Nations. Thus, in each context we asked partici- pants whether there would be more or less poverty, dis- ease, and other indicators of dysfunction in the future compared with today. However, projections to the future can involve forecasts about future economic and

Figure 1.

The collective futures framework.