Adolescents' future-orientation

The primary focus of this volume is on the adolescents’ ability to direct their thoughts and actions towards the future and to create mental construals of hypothetical future events: present images, wishes, hopes, fears and plans regarding action-goals in the future. The major aim is to understand how young people construct their future-oriented goals and the plans related to them as a means of navigating into adulthood, how these efforts are determined by their previous life history, and the extent to which they think future-orientation will influence their later lives. The contributions included in this volume take one further step towards a full understanding of these complex mechanisms.