Future orientation

Future orientation is broadly defined as the extent to which an individual thinks about the future, anticipates future consequences, and plans ahead before acting. Across development, future orientation is particularly important during periods of major changes, for example during the transition from adolescence to adulthood, when youth must make choices about social groups, academic paths, as well as risky behaviors like drug and alcohol use, and sexual activity. Several models have been developed to describe the various factors that combine to impact future orientation. Future orientation is broadly defined as the extent to which an individual thinks about the future, anticipates future consequences, and plans ahead before acting. Across development, future orientation is particularly important during periods of major changes, for example during the transition from adolescence to adulthood, when youth must make choices about social groups, academic paths, as well as risky behaviors like drug and alcohol use, and sexual activity. Several models have been developed to describe the various factors that combine to impact future orientation. There are several different ways that future orientation has been observed and measured in research. The most prominent constructs include possible selves, optimism, time perspective, delay discounting. While different in definition, all of these constructs are thought to tap into and impact how people think and plan for the future. Despite the many different ways that future orientation is investigated and measured, there is evidence that a hopeful and purposeful sense of the future is associated with positive outcomes. The collection of self-representations or self-knowledge that someone has about their self is referred to as their self-concept, and this is formed based on past experiences and expectations about the future. Forming a self-concept about themselves in the future is referred to as possible selves. The research on possible selves, which includes positive or negative views of the self in the future, explains that the way that youth think of themselves in the future can guide and determine current behavior. In other words, thinking of oneself in a desirable place in the future is motivating in two ways. First, it motivates individuals to work towards their desired future-self by doing things that help them reach their end goals. Secondly, individuals may also be motivated to avoid behaviors that can reduce the chances of reaching their desired self by compromising their goals. Hoped-for selves and feared selves impact future goals and aspirations. Through this, people can imagine the type of person they will become in the future. Optimism is thought to be a broader form of hope, that describes more generally positive expectations for the future. This is typically measured in research using surveys that include items like 'I always look at the bright side of things'. Optimism is typically examined with pessimism, and is thought to be a trait that is consistent over time. Optimism has a strong influence on future orientation because optimistic people generally have positive expectations for their future and believe things will happen in their favour. Another way in which future orientation has been conceptualized is through time perspective. This line of research similarly focuses on how current behavior is not only determined by the present, but also the past and the future, because the past and future are present at a cognitive level. Two related components of the time perspective framework are time attitude and time orientation. Time attitude refers to a person's negative or positive attitudes toward the past, present and future. Time orientation refers to the direction (i.e., past, present, or future) that most commonly motivates a person's behavior and thinking. Using this framework, studies have shown that people who focus on the past are more likely to have adverse mental health outcomes, those who focus on the present take more risks, and those who focus on the future are more conscientious, plan, and consider future consequences. Extending from the research on executive functioning, delay discounting is defined as the extent to which a person prefers an immediate reward of less value compared to a delayed reward of more value. The task that is used to measure delay discounting is a behavioral decision-making task in which people are asked to choose between an immediate reward of less value (e.g., $400 today) and a variety of delayed rewards of more value (e.g., $700 1 month from now or $800 six months from now). How well someone performs on this task has been linked to development of brain regions, specifically the pre-frontal lobe, that are responsible for a person's reactions to rewards and punishments, and resistance to impulses. Delay discounting is used as a measure of future orientation because people need to be able to be motivated to work and plan in the present to receive the reward or reach their goal. It also provides a behavioral and neurological basis for future orientation. This approach to understanding future orientation focuses on the content and themes individuals and groups refer to when they think about the future. This may be understood as the 'cognitive representation' of the future, focusing on the specific images or domains that fill thoughts about the future. This approach of measuring future orientation gained popularity beginning in the 1980s. Traditionally, this would be measured by asking people to list their hopes and fears for the future through open-ended questions or questionnaires, which are then grouped into life domains (e.g., education, work and career, etc.). Due to the descriptive nature of this approach, the thematic approach has been particularly helpful in determining group differences in future orientation, such as gender, lower and middle class, younger and older adolescents, and ethnic groups. Through the thematic approach, core and culture-specific domains of future orientation have been identified. Despite different physical conditions, cultural orientations, and beliefs about adult roles, people growing up in different socio-cultural settings relate to a common core of four prospective life domains: education, work and career, marriage and family, and self concerns. Beyond these, people build their future according to the norms, values and life conditions in which they live (i.e., social context where they are from). For example, the individualistic orientations and economic comfort of Western societies is reflected in how Australian adolescents commonly list leisure activities, German adolescents include material comfort and Finnish adolescents list property and leisure activities. Specific country regulation, such as mandatory military service for Israeli Jewish girls and boys and Druze boys, are also reflected in the lists of adolescents from different cultures. Israeli Arab and Druze adolescents, growing up in societies that endorse family-oriented and collectivist values, also list others (i.e., family members) and the collective/community (i.e., my village, country, nation) on their list of hopes and fears for the future. This seminal model of future orientation is a three-component model including motivation, planning and evaluation. Motivation refers to interests expressed by the goals the individuals set for themselves, planning refers to the plans and activities the individual will use to reach their goals, and evaluation refers to the individual's anticipation of successfully meeting these goals (i.e., optimism). Nurmi's model focuses primarily on the cognitive representation of anticipated events, can be applied generally to all domains (e.g., education, work and career goals).