People tend to hold an optimistic view of their futures. Using a novel paradigm to examine the anticipated change from the personal past to the personal future, we found that the future was not always perceived as brighter than the past. College students (N = 156) recalled positive and negative personal events of various situations. Following each recall, they imagined a future personal event involving the same situation. Participants expected over half of the events to change in either upward or downward directions, depending on the valence of the past events. In addition, participants anticipated greater changes in domains of less stability, and Asians anticipated greater changes than European Americans. Anticipated future changes were further associated with psychological well-being. The findings shed new light on future event simulation.

Dialectical thinking reflects both a view of the world and a view of oneself as fluid and changing. This chapter discusses the role of dialectical thinking in people’s prediction of changes in their future selves. Focus is on the future self-concept, namely, the conceptual representation of the self in the future, and the episodic future self, namely, the anticipation of specific future personal events. It is proposed that dialectical thinking, as a form of cultural knowledge, may guide people in their perception of their future selves relative to their present and past selves and in their construction of plausible future events from past experiences. The chapter further discusses the relation of dialectical thinking and the future self to psychological well-being. Throughout the discussion, original data from a cross-cultural project with mainland Chinese and European American college students are presented, to illustrate the psychological and cultural foundations of the future self.