one of the many fascinating cognitive gymnastics about humans is our ability to see the collective future (macro issues like economic decline, war, climate crisis, etc.) as disastrous while simultaneously excluding expectations of our own individual futures from that projected reality.

this mental time travel differentiates between personal future thinking and a related optimism bias, and collective future thinking (chronic pessimism bias).

interesting new research paper in the Applied Cognitive Psychology journal studied the breakdown of this psychological firewall and how temporal distance acts as a psychological buffer against collective pessimism:

• near-term vulnerability (0–5 years):

  • reality check works; we lose our rose-coloured glasses once we realise global problems will spill into our everyday lives, impacting our optimism for the future.

• distant-future insulation (10–15 years):

  • optimism bounces back; we imagine our far-off lives will be fine and feel little emotional distress about it (it does, though, dial it down a notch from "amazing" to "good"); our brain turns it into a movie of sorts, able to suspend disbelief long enough to imagine grim consequences for others while believing ourselves shielded from it.

paper: Exposure to Negative Information About the Collective Future Eliminates the Positivity Bias for the Personal Events in the Near Future by Şule Gülpınar Çiftkaya, Esra Konan Ay, and Simay Ikier.