This article was originally published in Fortune.
America has a pessimism problem. Surveys show that large percentages of the public envision a future of decline and despair.
This is concerning because building a better future starts with envisioning a better future. The good news is that we might be able to inspire a positive outlook about the future by doing a better job of highlighting past progress.
America has long enjoyed a reputation for being a country of future-looking optimists. Yet, a survey by the Pew Research Center revealed that at least two-thirds of Americans believe that the nation will become economically weaker, less important in the world, and more politically divided by 2050. A Wall Street Journal-NORC survey showed that nearly 80% of Americans do not expect life for their children’s generation to be better than it has been for their own generation.
Numerous other polls indicate that most Americans believe the country is on the wrong track. At the Human Flourishing Lab, we regularly conduct surveys exploring American attitudes about the future, and we generally find that only around half of the population (at best) has positive expectations about the future of their nation. This is true for both abstract attitudes of the future and specific beliefs about how technological advances will affect life in the coming years. For example, we have found that over 50% of Americans believe that artificial intelligence will largely have negative effects on society and our personal lives by reducing human freedom and creativity while destabilizing the economy.
Does this matter? Some might believe that we don’t need a positive attitude about the future to build a better tomorrow. I’ve even heard people claim that optimism might undermine progress by encouraging complacency.
