Usually, we think about the future prospectively, looking forward in time: Imagining what might happen tomorrow or in a week from now. This is our normal mode of future thinking. But how would we imagine the future as if we had already experienced it?
Our mind is incredibly flexible. We can think of “what would have happend, if…” – counterfactual thinking of the past. However, we can also imagine the future from a perspective as if it had already happened. To do so, we need to mentally travel forward in time – for example – to one’s 100-year old self. From this perspective, we can then look back on our life span and remember what has happened. In the scientific field of future cognition, this is called Retrospective Future Thinking.
Development of retrospective future thinking
In my Master’s thesis, I have developed this method in close collaboration with Annette Bohn. In the very first study of retrospective future thinking, we have asked people to imagine themselves as being 100-years old. From the perspective of their 100-year-old self, they were then asked to “remember” their most important events they had experienced during their hypothetical life time of 100 years. We found that thinking about the future as if it had already happend is closely tied to our cultural expectation of what is supposed to or expected to happen during a life course – even when imagining the future backwards. Furthermore, we did find that this influence of cultural expectations is not so strong for older participants as it is for younger people. Furthermore, it seems to be more important when we think of events we have not yet experienced (future events) and less relevant for thinking of events that we have already experienced (past events).
Roderer, A., & Bohn, A. (2022). Retrospective future thinking as a novel method to imagine the future: remembering autobiographical events from the perspective of the future self. Memory, 1-12. https://doi.org/10.1080/09658211.2022.2120997
You can read more about this study here.
Comparison of prospective and retrospective future thinking
Does thinking about the future from a retrospective perspective is different to when we think about the future from a prospective perspective? I have addressed this question in my doctoral training together with Annette Bohn and Lynn Ann Watson. Our research has focused on the question whether it actually makes a difference if we look forward in time (prospective future thinking) or image the future as if we had already experienced it (retrospective future thinking). Interestingly, our research suggests that it does make a difference. With a focus on the life goals a person has, we asked participants to either look forward to the future or to imagine the future backwards from the perspective of their 100-year-old self. What did we find? We found that it does make a difference for what goals we think about and how we picture a specific event closely related to ours goals depending on whether we look forward or backward in time.
Roderer, A., Watson, L. A., & Bohn, A. (2022). Remembering future life goals: Retrospective future thinking affects life goal qualities. Acta Psychologica, 226, 103582. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.actpsy.2022.103582
To read more about how it affects the goals we have in life, click here.
Roderer, A., Bohn, A., & Watson, L. A. (2022). Retrospective future thinking: Keeping distant personal future events mentally close. Quarterly Journal of Experimental Psychology. https://doi.org/10.1177/17470218221126471
A short version for how we picture a specific event in our mind is currently in process.
What is next?
We have shown that is does matter from which perspective we think about the future: Forward or backwards. In a next step, it is important to investigate whether the same results are found when the studies are conducted again (= replication). Furthermore, it will be interesting to examine whether retrospective future thinking can be used as a method to support people to move towards their goals.
“Philosophy is perfectly right in saying that life must be understood backwards. But then one forgets the other clause—that it must be lived forwards. The more one thinks through this clause, the more one concludes that life in temporality never becomes properly understandable, simply because never at any time does one get perfect repose to take a stance: Backwards.”
Søren Kierkegaard, 1843