Members in the Media
From: Scientific American

Imagining the Future Invokes Your Memory

Scientific American:

I remember my retirement like it was yesterday. As I recall, I am still working, though not as hard as I did when I was younger. My wife and I still live in the city, where we bicycle a fair amount and stay fit. We have a favorite coffee shop where we read the morning papers and say hello to the other regulars. We don’t play golf.

In reality, I’m not even close to retirement. This is just a scenario I must have spun out at some point in the past. There are other future scenarios, but the details aren’t all that important. Notably, all of my futures have a peaceful and contented feel to them. They don’t include any financial or health problems, nor do they include boredom—not for me or anyone else I know.

A new study from the January issue of Psychological Science may explain why we are all so optimistic about what’s to come. The authors report that people tend to remember imagined future scenarios that are happy better than they recall the unhappy ones.

Read the whole story: Scientific American

More of our Members in the Media >


APS regularly opens certain online articles for discussion on our website. Effective February 2021, you must be a logged-in APS member to post comments. By posting a comment, you agree to our Community Guidelines and the display of your profile information, including your name and affiliation. Any opinions, findings, conclusions, or recommendations present in article comments are those of the writers and do not necessarily reflect the views of APS or the article’s author. For more information, please see our Community Guidelines.

Please login with your APS account to comment.