TY - JOUR
T1 - No time like the future?
T2 - Towards a generative, prospective and possibilities‐focussed ‘futures social psychology’
AU - Prosser, Annayah M. B.
AU - Bosone, Lucia
AU - Fernando, Julian W.
AU - Sullivan, Gavin Brent
PY - 2025/10/31
Y1 - 2025/10/31
N2 - Anticipating, considering and incorporating possible futures are central components of human social life. Our social actions, beliefs, values and interactions are all oriented towards, or away from, variousfuture outcomes. Yet despite this, social psychology is yet to harness its unique contribution to our un-derstanding of the future, not addressing the challenges that many other disciplines are confronting inthis emerging discipline. In this editorial, we introduce our special issue on ‘futures social psychology’,and in doing so, we provide a starting point for scholars interested in furthering research in this area. We outline previous important discipline-specific and methodological contributions, connecting socialpsychological perspectives to the wider academic and practitioner landscape. We outline how our elevenspecial issue contributions advance discussion, theorizing and research methodology on topics such assustainability, collective group continuity, prefigurative politics, AI sentience and degrowth policies.Finally, we encourage social psychologists of all topic and methodological persuasions to adopt a genera-tive, prospective and possibilities-focussed approach to their work, to ensure that social psychology as adiscipline can effectively meet the challenges of the future and maximize its impact.
AB - Anticipating, considering and incorporating possible futures are central components of human social life. Our social actions, beliefs, values and interactions are all oriented towards, or away from, variousfuture outcomes. Yet despite this, social psychology is yet to harness its unique contribution to our un-derstanding of the future, not addressing the challenges that many other disciplines are confronting inthis emerging discipline. In this editorial, we introduce our special issue on ‘futures social psychology’,and in doing so, we provide a starting point for scholars interested in furthering research in this area. We outline previous important discipline-specific and methodological contributions, connecting socialpsychological perspectives to the wider academic and practitioner landscape. We outline how our elevenspecial issue contributions advance discussion, theorizing and research methodology on topics such assustainability, collective group continuity, prefigurative politics, AI sentience and degrowth policies.Finally, we encourage social psychologists of all topic and methodological persuasions to adopt a genera-tive, prospective and possibilities-focussed approach to their work, to ensure that social psychology as adiscipline can effectively meet the challenges of the future and maximize its impact.
UR - http://www.scopus.com/inward/record.url?scp=105012414665&partnerID=8YFLogxK
U2 - 10.1111/bjso.70007
DO - 10.1111/bjso.70007
M3 - Editorial
SN - 0144-6665
VL - 64
JO - British Journal of Social Psychology
JF - British Journal of Social Psychology
IS - 4
M1 - e70007
ER -