a post by Andrew MacLeod for the OUP blog
That we remember the past is obvious. But as well as the ability to recall what has already happened to us, we are also able to imagine what might happen to us in the future. Is this capacity for prospection important? Absolutely. Being able to anticipate what might happen and take relevant steps, prioritise goals, and form plans of action for what we are going to do have been fundamental to our evolutionary success. Prospection underpins most of what we do on a daily basis, enabling us to navigate our way through the complexities of life. But surviving, reproducing, and functioning, fundamental as they are, do not tell the whole story about what most of us would think of as a good life. We also want lives that are happy. How is prospection important for this kind of emotional well-being? This question has been at the heart of what I have spent the last 30 years researching.
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Prospection was not a term with which I was familiar before reading this blog post. I asked Mr Google what the word was about and it comes from the same stem as prospecting (as in looking for gold).
Wikipedia says:
In psychology, prospection is the generation and evaluation of mental representations of possible futures. This ability fundamentally shapes human cognition, emotion, and motivation, and yet remains an understudied field of research, according to some psychologists.
Perhaps I should now go an buy (borrow) Mr Macleod’s book to learn more.
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