The Time for Action is Now: Subjective Temporal Proximity Enhances Pursuit of Remote-Future Goals

Abstract

Although individuals must act today to achieve many long-term, collective future goals, they often consider such goals to be temporally remote concerns that do not require immediate action. In two studies, the authors examined whether individuals are more motivated to pursue long-term collective future goals when they subjectively experience them as temporally proximal, holding constant objective date projections. The authors found that experimentally inducing participants to view distant future climate change consequences as temporally proximal enhanced proenvironmental motivation (Study 1) and behavior during the week following the study (Study 2) because the subjective temporal proximity made them construe climate change goals more concretely (Study 2). Thus, although the temporally distant nature of remote future goals may generally undermine motivation, making these goals feel temporally close can motivate individuals to pursue them in the present.