The evolutionary functions of imagination and fiction and how they may contribute to psychological wellbeing during a pandemic

The COVID-19 pandemic caused widespread social disruption and lockdowns, with negative consequences for psychological wellbeing worldwide. We argue that mental simulation, through the cognitive capacity of imagination and its instigator fiction, may have substantial positive contributions to psychological wellbeing during the pandemic. We review relevant research on the evolutionary functions of simulation through imagination and fiction, and propose that simulation is a tool to support (i) planning and future thought, (ii) coping and emotion regulation, (iii) bonding and social needs, and (iv) identity and worldviews. We suggest that these functions can contribute to coping during the pandemic. We also address the dark side of simulation, whereby excessive simulation may have negative effects such as rumination. In light of previous research and the negative psychological effects of COVID-19 disruptions and lockdowns, we suggest that there is much scope for future research on this topic, including whether simulations offered by imaginative activity could be useful and inexpensive mental health tools.

When Knowledge is Blinding: The Dangers of Being Certain About the Future

Despite much research on certainty and future thought, it remains unclear how certainty about the future influences the ways people think, feel, and act. Three studies (N = 1218) examined how certainty about the future impacts people’s cognition, affect, and behavior during two major events of future uncertainty; the COVID-19 pandemic and the 2020 U.S. Presidential Election. In Study 1, certainty about the future of COVID-19 predicted ignorance of medical information and lower objective knowledge about the virus. In line with these findings, in Study 2, certainty about the future of COVID-19 predicted endorsing riskier health behaviors. Turning to the 2020 Presidential Election, in Study 3, being certain that one’s preferred candidate would win the election predicted greater claims that the election was rigged (after the election) and identifying with Capitol insurrectionists. These findings introduce certainty about the future as a psychological phenomenon that entails intellectual blindness across diverging domains.

Why People Think They Might Hasten Their Death When Faced With Irremediable Health Conditions Compared to Why They Actually Do so

This study surveys the differences of relatively healthy proponents of end-of-life choices and people with irremediable health conditions having already made the decision to hasten their deaths on what each group considers important in influencing a desire to hasten death. Psychosocial factors were more important than physical ones for both groups; but those contemplating what might influence them to hasten their deaths in the future thought pain and feeling ill would be much bigger factors than they turned out to be for those deciding to do so. Those having decided to hasten their deaths cited the lack of any further viable medical treatments and having to live in a nursing home as bigger factors. Identifying these psychosocial factors influencing a desire for a hastened death suggests that caregivers and medical providers may want to review what compassionate understanding and support looks like for people wanting to hasten their death.

The Future is Less Concrete than the Present: A Neural Signature of the Concreteness of Prospective Thought Is Modulated by Temporal Proximity during Intertemporal Decision-Making

Why do people discount future rewards? Multiple theories in psychology argue that future events are imagined less concretely than immediate events, thereby diminishing their perceived value. Here we provide neuroscientific evidence for this proposal. First, we construct a neural signature of the concreteness of prospective thought, using an fMRI dataset where the concreteness of imagined future events is orthogonal to their valence by design. Then, we apply this neural signature in two additional fMRI datasets, each using a different delay discounting task, to show that neural measures of concreteness decline as rewards are delayed farther into the future.Significance StatementPeople tend to devalue, or discount, outcomes in the future relative to those that are more immediate. This tendency is evident in people’s difficulty in making healthy food choices or saving money for retirement. Several psychological theories propose that discounting occurs because delayed outcomes are perceived less concretely that more immediate ones. Here we build a brain decoder for the concreteness of future thought and use this unobtrusive measure to show that outcomes are processed less concretely as they occur farther into the future.

Artificial Intelligence in Higher Education and Learning

Artificial intelligence is an emerging technology that is popular in education technology. AI plays a vital role to e-teaching and e-learning in higher education. In this chapter, a major focus is on exploring the wonders of the development of AI in higher education for teaching and learning processes. It analyses the educational ramifications of rising innovations in transit student learning and how organizations instruct and develop. Late inventive degrees of progress and the accelerating new headway in cutting edge training are researched to predict the future thought of cutting-edge instruction in all actuality. The role of AI in higher education is presented in detail by systematic review.

Becoming Human

Becoming Human: Matter and Meaning in an Antiblack World demonstrates that the history of racialized gender and maternity, specifically antiblackness, is indispensable to future thought on matter, materiality, animality, and posthumanism. Rather than applying a pre-given philosophical framework to literature and visual culture, Becoming Human provides a model for reading African diasporic literature and visual art for the philosophical premises, interventions, and implications of these forms and traditions. Becoming Human argues that African diasporic cultural production does not coalesce into a unified tradition that merely seeks inclusion into the dominant conception of “the human” but, rather, frequently alters the meaning and significance of being (human) and engages in imaginative practices of worlding from the perspective of a history of blackness’s bestialization and thingification: the process of imagining a black person as an empty vessel, a nonbeing, a nothing, an ontological zero, coupled with the violent imposition of colonial myths and racial hierarchy. In complementary but highly distinct ways, the literary and visual texts in Becoming Human articulate being (human) in a manner that neither relies on animal denigration nor reestablishes liberal humanism as the authority on being (human). What emerges from this questioning is a radically unruly sense of being/knowing/feeling existence, one that necessarily ruptures the foundations of the current hegemonic mode of “the human.”

Why We Imagine Our Future: Introducing the Functions of Future Thinking Scale (FoFTS)

Imagining future events is a crucial cognitive process in adaptation, but impairments have been identified in a range of mental disorders. Taking a functional approach to future thinking, this paper reports on the development and deployment of a scale to assess the frequency of self-reported functions of future thinking: The Functions of Future Thinking Scale (FoFTS). In Study 1 (N = 565) items were developed and subjected to exploratory factor analysis. Ten factors were extracted representing distinct purposes of future thinking: Boredom Reduction, Death Preparation, Identity Contrasting, Negative Emotion Regulation, Social Bonding, Goal Setting, Planning, Problem-Solving, Decision-Making, and Positive Emotion Regulation. Construct, convergent and divergent validity were established. The FoFTS predicted unique variance in transdiagnostic variables even after accounting for frequency, attitudes, and clarity of future thought. In Study 2 (N = 467), confirmatory factor analysis showed the 10-factor FoFTS model was an excellent fit to the data. In Study 3 (N = 106) it was shown that participants with probable major depression, relative to non-depressed participants, reported a significantly different profile of future thinking for different purposes. In conclusion, the FoFTS can be used to examine future thinking from a functional perspective and may help enrich models of psychopathology.

Ironic Effects of Thought Suppression: A Meta-Analysis

The ironic effect of thought suppression refers to the phenomenon in which individuals trying to rid their mind of a target thought ironically experience greater levels of occurrence and accessibility of the thought compared with individuals who deliberately concentrate on the thought (Wegner, 1994, doi:10.1037/0033-295X.101.1.34). Ironic effects occurring after thought suppression, also known as rebound effects, were consistently detected by previous meta-analyses. However, ironic effects that occur during thought suppression, also known as immediate enhancement effects, were found to be largely absent. In this meta-analysis, we test Wegner’s original proposition that detection of immediate enhancement effects depends on the cognitive load experienced by individuals when enacting thought suppression. Given that thought suppression is an effortful cognitive process, we propose that the introduction of additional cognitive load would compete for the allocation of existing cognitive resources and impair capacity for thought suppression. Studies ( k = 31) consistent with Wegner’s original thought-suppression paradigm were analyzed. Consistent with our predictions, rebound effects were observed regardless of cognitive load, whereas immediate enhancement effects were observed only in the presence of cognitive load. We discuss implications in light of ironic-process theory and suggest future thought-suppression research.

Disaster and Climate Change Issues in Japan’s Society 5.0—A Discussion

Faced with a number of socio-economic challenges and a continuously rising risk of more frequent and higher-impact disasters, the Japanese government, in cooperation with the private sector, has formulated a new comprehensive strategy, under the name of “Society 5.0”, which is to utilize a number of various technological innovative solutions in an attempt to provide a secure future for its citizens, centering around several important sectors. The current paper aims to discuss disaster risk and climate change policies in Society 5.0 in particular, with some special focus on adaptation and inclusiveness. We start with giving details on the Society 5.0 concept and its goals, after which we focus more specifically on how disaster and climate change policies are integrated into the new strategy and proceed to discuss several contentious issues which represent both opportunities and risks or challenges for implementing the concept in a truly sustainable way. The paper tries to present various points of view and hopes to provide some food for future thought and research, rather than solutions or specific suggestions.