Abstract
In psychology, there is renewed interest in the constructive role of the future as guide for current thought and action (Seligman et al., 2013; Sools, Tromp & Mooren, 2015; Sools & Mooren, 2012). Although future imagination has been central to earlier research on possible selves for example (Markus & Nurius, 1986; Cinnirella, 1998), the importance of a more radical and wide-ranging shift to a future-making science to address key challenges of our time has been proposed in disciplines ranging from psychology (Gergen, 2015), anthropology (Appadurai, 2013), sociology (Levitas, 2013) and philosophy (Unger, 2015). In political psychology, the importance of the future is implicit in central concepts such as ideology (Chau, Chiu & Peng, 2003), expectation (Bombay, Matheson &Anisman, 2013) motivation (van Zomeren, 2016), anxiety when anticipating future threats (Wohl & Branscombe, 2009), and in-group projection processes (Sacchi et al., 2013). More explicit recognition of the constructive role of the future in political psychology can be found in research on political horizons (Dunmire, 2005), restorative justice (Greenwood, 2015), and the role of confidence in risk attitude (Kanner, 2004).