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We review previous research on intergenerational conflict, focusing on the practical implications of this research for organizational leaders. We explain how the interaction between the interpersonal and intertemporal dimensions of intergenerational decisions creates the unique psychology of intergenerational decision-making behavior. In addition, we review the boundary conditions that have characterized much of the previous research in this area, and we examine the potential effects of loosening these constraints. Our proposals for future research include examination of the effect of intra-generational decision making on intergenerational beneficence, consideration of the role of third parties and linkage issues, investigation of the effects of intergenerational communications and negotiation when generations can interact, examination of the role of social power in influencing intergenerational interactions, investigation of the interaction between temporal construal and immortality striving, and exploration of the ways in which present decision makers detect and define the intergenerational dilemmas in their social environments.

In recent years, there has been a growing trend of individuals willingly opting for employment positions that do not fully use their education, skills and abilities, a phenomenon known as voluntary overqualification. This study aims to investigate the factors that influence and the formation mechanism of this emerging phenomenon. Drawing upon social cognition theory, this study explores the relationship between work values and voluntary overqualification while also examining the mediating role of the future work self and the moderating role of perceived marketability.

This study used a longitudinal approach, collecting data through questionnaires administered at multiple time points. The sample consisted of 607 employees from various departments of five Chinese companies. Regression analysis using the PROCESS macro in SPSS was used to test the research hypotheses.

The results indicate a positive relationship between employees’ work values and voluntary overqualification. Furthermore, this relationship is mediated by the future work self. Additionally, perceived marketability plays a moderating intermediary role in the whole model.

This study contributes to the overqualification literature by introducing a novel type of overqualification and unveiling the mechanism by which work values influence voluntary overqualification. The findings provide insights for understanding and managing employees who are voluntarily overqualified.

This study aims to investigate whether and how a high turnover rate stimulates employees to engage more in learning behavior.

Drawing on self-regulation theory, the authors suggest that the motive for employees to engage in learning behavior is to improve themselves. Such a need can be activated when they reflect on themselves and realize the discrepancy between their current selves and desired future selves. The authors argue that the employees’ perceived poor performance at daily work may induce their desire for self-improvement via making the future work selves salient, and in turn engage more in learning behavior. This is particularly so when turnover rate is high because employees may be alert of and concerned more about their own poor performance. In an experience sampling study, the authors obtained evidence for these hypotheses.

When turnover rate was high, employees’ poor performance increased salience of future work selves, which in turn facilitated their learning behavior. This relationship was not significant when turnover rate was low.

Contrary to the typical view that high turnover rate leads to knowledge loss for the companies, the present study findings suggest that it could also serve as a motivational factor facilitating employees’ learning behavior, which is an important way to increase knowledge pool of the companies.

This paper raises a question of how to assess the effectiveness of foresight activity. Among the various assessments of foresight activity, the author explores how to develop and assess an individual’s abilities in relation to foresight activity. More specifically, the author suggests a possible metric for assessing how foresight activity can help individuals cultivate self-efficacy toward postulated futures. This paper aims to propose that researchers and practitioners working in foresight can leverage the concept of self-efficacy toward futures to develop a method of evaluating foresight activities on an individual level.

To assess the concept of self-efficacy toward futures, this research identifies the factors that could create a possible metric of self-efficacy with respect to various futures on an individual level. For this study, citizens living in Korea participated in a futures studies program, where the author measured and analyzed to what extent participatory foresight activities could help these individuals perceive their own self-efficacy toward futures. The changes in the participants’ attitudes were measured by conducting the survey before and after the program.

Based on the literature review and a survey, the author crafted a potential self-efficacy in relation to a scale of futures, which consists of four subscales: an ability to shape new meanings, an ability to challenge the status quo, an ability to make a decision and put it into action and an ability to learn something new by cooperating with others. These abilities are believed to be relevant elements to prepare for, adapt to and evolve with social changes. This paper also uses the possible metric to assess the effectiveness of foresight activity in Korea and argues that foresight activity helps Korean individuals perceive self-efficacy toward postulated futures.

Researchers attempted to answer the question of what foresight activities are generally useful to laypersons. The author proposes that perceiving self-efficacy toward futures is one of the efficacies that foresight pursues. The author endeavors to create a metric to assess the effectiveness of foresight attempts to identify which capabilities can be developed through participation in foresight activities.

The purpose of this paper is to analyze why and when the future work self affects employee creativity.

Survey data were collected from 171 supervisor–employee dyads in four Chinese enterprises.

The results indicate that the future work self has a positive effect on employee creativity. Further, thriving at work mediates the links between the future work self and employee creativity. The authors also theorize that overall fairness moderates the positive effects of the future work self on thriving at work and employee creativity.

The study supports the self-determination perspective regarding the future work self and strengthens the application of this perspective in an effort to understand the relationship between the future work self and employee creativity.

The study aims to investigate the psychological mechanism that motivates consumers to pay more for a preferred brand that reflects their actual or ideal self-concept, by examining the shift in attention between consumer’s present, future, and past moments.

First, in a survey setting, the study identifies the relationship between temporal focus and self-congruence. Subsequently, we conduct three experiments to capture the effects of temporal focus on brand preference and willingness to pay (WTP). In these experiments, we manipulate consumers’ self-congruence and temporal focus.

The findings show that consumers with a present focus (distant future and distant past foci) tend to evaluate a brand more preferably when the brand serves to reflect their actual (ideal) selves. However, in the absence of present focus consumers’ WTP is more for a brand that reflects their ideal selves.

The study does not have an actual measure on consumers’ WTP; instead we use single-item measure.

This study sheds new light on branding strategy. The results suggest that authentic and aspirational branding strategies are relevant to publicly consumed products. Brand managers could incorporate consumers’ temporal focus into branding strategy that could significantly influence consumer preference and WTP for their brands.

This study expands our understanding of brand usage imagery congruity by showing that temporal focus is an important determinant of self-congruence. In this regard, this study empirically investigates the relationship of temporal focus, self-congruence, brand preference, and WTP. It further reveals that mere brand preference does not necessarily lead consumers to pay more for symbolic brands.

The purpose of this paper is to describe the main forms and components of future consciousness, to identify the important values for enhancing future consciousness, and to describe a variety of educational strategies for heightening future consciousness.

This paper presents a historical review of the development of future consciousness and a psychological review of recent theory and research on its components and benefits, and argues for a teaching philosophy and strategy based on positive psychology and the development of virtues and wisdom.

Future consciousness is multi‐dimensional and involves all the major capacities of the human mind. A set of different forms of future consciousness has evolved over time, encompassing practical and social intelligence, mythic narrative, rationality and emotionality, science fiction, and future studies. Psychologically, future consciousness involves human emotion and motivation, learning and memory, all major forms of cognition, and self‐identity. Psychological processes that contribute to expansive, optimistic, and creative future consciousness can be effectively taught. The development of virtues necessary for enhanced future consciousness can be facilitated through future‐focused self‐narrative activities.

This paper provides a succinct and comprehensive review of the major historical forms of future consciousness and its basic psychological components, and develops an educational approach to teaching future consciousness based on this comprehensive review. The approach is unique in that it is grounded in comprehensive historical research, contemporary psychology, and recent thinking in the study of the future, and creates a virtue and wisdom based approach to teaching future consciousness that subsumes and transcends all traditional educational approaches.

The ability to project oneself into a future landscape is a critical aspect for studying and practicing the science of foresight and foresight-based learning systems. The purpose of this paper is to discuss how we can construct immersive spatial narratives through multimedia-enhanced learning approaches, to increase deeper learner immersion and levels of creativity to transport the learner into a simulated 2030 landscape by reducing the distance between the projected reality and the Self.

The author designed a foresight-based course on the Future of Mobile Learning underpinned by a new learning system that embraced the concept of immersive spatial narratives, combining physical, virtual and cognitive learning spaces, which enable students to explore complex, undiscovered or unstructured knowledge. Practicing was carried out on 35 students who had completed the course during the preceding three years through a questionnaire and interviews to establish increased levels of creativity in a simulated future landscape.

The paper established that the addition of multimedia learning environments and tools to foresight-based learning creates immersive spatial narratives that increase creativity and learner ability to project him/herself into a simulated future landscape. In all, 75 per cent of the respondents stated that having to think about the future and place themselves in a practicing landscape increased their creative skills.

A new, foresight-based learning system driven by the concept of immersive spatial narratives, enhanced with student-created multimedia learning tools. The system demonstrated how this approach helps to increase learner creativity and the ability to transition from their Present Self to their Future Self.

Economic stressors such as job insecurity, job loss, unemployment, and underemployment cause severe difficulties for the workers affected, their families, organizations, and societies overall. Consequently, most past research has taken a thoroughly negative perspective on economic stress, addressing its diverse negative consequences and the ways that people try to cope with them. And even when following the advice provided by the scientific literature, people affected by economic stress will usually end up being off worse than they were before the onset of the stressor.

The current chapter pays credit to this perspective yet also tries to counterbalance it with an alternative one. While acknowledging the vast amount of literature outlining the negative consequences of economic stress on peoples’ well-being and careers, some literature also points at opportunities for a more positive perspective. More specifically, we argue that affected people can use a wide repertoire of behaviors for handling their current situation. Of particular promise in this regard is the concept of career adaptability, generally defined as the ability to change to fit into new career-related circumstances. Indeed, studies show that under certain conditions, career adaptability can facilitate people's search for not just any job but for a qualitatively better job, thus breaking through the spiral of losses usually associated with economic stress.

For the purpose of this argument, we link career adaptability to the concept of proactive coping, analyzing how and under which conditions career adaptability may present a contextualized form of proactive coping. We then address known personal and situational antecedents of career adaptability and show how career adaptability may be fostered and trained among different types of job seekers. We end this chapter with a discussion of open questions as well as directions for future research.

Acting on the behalf of future generations can require nontrivial sacrifice on the part of the present generation. Yet, people can gain important social psychological benefits from such acts, such as experiencing a connection to an entity that will presumably continue to exist in the social environment after they themselves are no longer a part of it. Consequently, intergenerational beneficence can help people to fill the basic human need for immortality striving. This is a benefit that is not as easily achieved by altruistic behaviors toward contemporary others. Based on some key insights from Terror Management Theory (TMT), I postulate that under conditions of mortality salience, people will demonstrate more altruism toward future generations than toward needy contemporaries − contrary to what might be expected based on the existing literature on intertemporal choice. Thus, the temporal aspect of intergenerational contexts may actually promote rather than hinder altruistic tendencies under certain conditions.