Imagining Life Beyond a Crisis: A Four Quadrant Model to Conceptualize Possible Futures

Power, Séamus A. et al. Article — Published Version Imagining Life Beyond a Crisis: A Four Quadrant Model to Conceptualize Possible Futures Culture & Psychology Provided in Cooperation with: WZB Berlin Social Science Center Suggested Citation: Power, Séamus A. et al. (2024) : Imagining Life Beyond a Crisis: A Four Quadrant Model to Conceptualize Possible Futures, Culture & Psychology, ISSN 1461-7056, Sage, London, Vol. 30, Iss. 2, pp. 411-430, https://doi.org/10.1177/1354067X231177459 This Version is available at: https://hdl.handle.net/10419/295118 Standard-Nutzungsbedingungen: Die Dokumente auf EconStor dürfen zu eigenen wissenschaftlichen Zwecken und zum Privatgebrauch gespeichert und kopiert werden. Sie dürfen die Dokumente nicht für öffentliche oder kommerzielle Zwecke vervielfältigen, öffentlich ausstellen, öffentlich zugänglich machen, vertreiben oder anderweitig nutzen. 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If the documents have been made available under an Open Content Licence (especially Creative Commons Licences), you may exercise further usage rights as specified in the indicated licence. https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/ Artide Culture & Psycho °gy Imagining Life Beyond a Crisis: A Four Quadrant Model to Conceptualize Possible Futures Culture & Psychology 2024, Vol. 30(2) 411-430 © The Author(s) 2023 Article reuse guidelines: sagepub.com/journals-permissions DOI: 10.1 177/1354067X231 177459 journals.sagepub.com/home/cap S Sage Seamus A Power and Merlin Schaeffer University of Copenhagen, Copenhagen, Denmark Jan P Heisig WZB Berlin Social Science Center, Berlin, Germany Freie Universität Berlin, Berlin, Germany Rebecca Udsen, Liisalotte Ordonez-Bueso and Thomas Morton University of Copenhagen, Copenhagen, Denmark Abstract In this article w e re p o rt evidencefrom a series o f sem i-structured interview s w ith a broad sample o f people living in D enm ark (n = 2 1), a b o u tth e ir perspectives on the future du ring the firs t m onths o f the global Covid-19 pandemic. The them atic and discursive analyses, based on an abductive ontology, illustrate imaginings o f the future along tw o vectors: individual to collective and descriptive to m oral. O n a descriptive and individual level, people imagined getting through the pandemic on a m yopic day-by-day basis; on a de scriptive and collective level, people imagined changes to w o rk and socializing. T heir future was bound and curtailed by th e ir im m ediate present. O n a m oral and individual level, respondents w ere less detailed in th e ir reports, but some vow ed to change th e ir behaviors. O n a m oral and collective level, respondents reported w hat the w o rld should be like and discussed changes to environm ental behaviors such as traveling, com m uting, and w ork. The m odel suggests the dom ain o f individual m oral imaginings is the m ost Corresponding authors: Seamus A Power, Department of Psychology, Oster Farimagsgade 2A, Kobenhavn K 1353, Denmark Email: [email protected] Jan P Heisig, W ZB Berlin Social Science Center, Berlin, Germany. Freie Universität Berlin, Berlin, Germany. Email: [email protected] 412 Culture & Psychology 30(2) difficult domain fo r people to imagine beyond the practicalities o f th e ir everyday lives. The im plications o f this m odel fo r com prehending im aginations o f the fu ture are discussed. Keywords Covid-19, Denm ark, imagining, future, m orality, social change Introduction In 2020, the Covid-19 pandemic powerfully disrupted the everyday lives of billions of people across the world. This once in a lifetime event has raised many questions that researchers across the social sciences have responded to by documenting and describing individual and collective outcomes across societies. Such studies may quantify attitudes, opinions and (self-reported) behaviors with respect to regulatory policies, personal hygiene and health measures (e.g., vaccination), and model the personal, social, and cultural factors that shape these. Yet, when such large-scale disruptions to life occur, people - both individually and collectively - also engage in meaning-making processes to repair what has been ruptured, sooth ambiguities, tensions, and uncertainties; through this, they make the unfamiliar familiar again (Guenther, 2022; Moscovici, 2008; Zittoun, 2006). It is in the latter vein that the present research is situated. Our aim was to explore qualitatively how people were understanding and experiencing the realities and consequences of the virus in their daily lives and how they made meaning during the first few months of the unfolding pandemic. To this end, here we present insights from a series of 21 semi-structured interviews with a sample of people living in Denmark. One focus of these interviews was how people imagined the future at a time when this future was particularly uncertain. Although other research has also explored people’s experiences and meaning-making processes during Covid-19, to our knowledge none have focused on this question of individuals’ imaginings of the future beyond the pandemic. Yet, it is important to comprehend the ways in which people imagine the future for several reasons. First, little is known about the content of people’s imaginings beyond a global pandemic. Second, although imaginings are not concretely real, their consequences are. That is, how people conceptualize their future has direct consequences for how they live in the present. Third, how people imagine possible futures has impact on the types of possible worlds that can be created. By understanding the reaches of people’s imaginings, we can begin to theorize on the scopes and limits of future world-making (Power et al., 2023). Although our empirical work is located within a specific social and cultural context, we believe the insights we draw have implications beyond this unique context. To appreciate those wider implications, we first discuss prior theoretical work on the imagination of possible (moral) worlds. Imagination In recent years, the process of imagining has received notable attention within sociocultural psychology (e.g., de Saint-Laurent et al., 2018; Wagoner et al., 2017; Zittoun & Gillespie, 2015; Zittoun & Glaveanu, 2018). One approach, the gap-filling model, Power et al. 413 conceptualizes imagination as being anchored in the proximal ‘here and now’ where the form and content of our imaginations are restricted by biological and cultural constraints. From this perspective, based in a pragmatic ontology, imagining is viewed as a process that completes our fragmentated experiences of the socio-cultural world (Pelaprat & Cole, 2011). Another recent theorization of imagination is based on perspective-taking (Glaveanu, 2015; Glaveanu et al., 2018). The central idea is that every imagination is an imagination o f an experience. From this constructivist ontological position, through a cycle of attempted perspective-taking and perspective-getting, imagination creates new possibilities. Within this view, imagination leads less to the ‘completion’ of experience (c.f., the ‘gap-filling model’), but instead transforms one’s own experience. Both these models are generative but leave open the question of how best to comprehend the dynamic psy chological processes that lead to imagination completing, transforming, or expanding human experiences, and thus the future. The looping model of imagination aims to comprehensively explain the sociocultural dynamics ofimagining (Zittoun & Gillespie, 2015). The authors ofthis model argue that imagination involves “disengaging from the here and-now of a proximal experience, which is submitted to causality and temporal linearity, to explore, or engage with al ternative, proximal and distal experiences, which are not submitted to linear or causal temporality. An imagination event thus begins with a decoupling of experience and usually concludes with a re-coupling. Thus, imagination is a loop” (Zittoun & Gillespie, 2015, p. 40). This looping metaphor also typically alludes to the ways in which imagined futures reflect understandings of the past (de Saint-Laurent et al., 2018; Power, 2020; Zittoun & Gillespie, 2015; 2018) and guide thoughts and actions in the present (Vygotsky, 1931; Wagoner et al., 2017; Zittoun & Cerchia, 2013). One recent advancement on the looping metaphor - the infinity theory - argues that people are always orientating themselves in the present by projecting both into imagined or constructed pasts and possible futures which is used to guide perceptions and actions in the present (Power, 2018; 2020). Thus, the deand re-coupling of experience through imagination also reflects the deand re-coupling of pasts, presents and futures. The process of imagining can occur on individual, group, or societal levels. Imagining at all levels is shaped by a range of cultural and societal processes including how manifestations of imagination are recognized, and responded to, by others. Because imagining is related to others, either internally or externally, imagining is simultaneously private and public. Although the content of one’s imagination may not be real, the consequences of imagination are. This is because people decouple from the here and now, loop to imagined pasts, presents, or futures, and recouple in the actual present with new thoughts, feelings, or ideas that potentially impact the trajectory of the individual who is imagining (or the group or society to which they belong). Therefore, the process of imagining the future sits on the horizon of world-making. Imaginings of how the world is, what it could turn into, and how it ought to be, are central concerns for psychology because comprehending the scopes and limits of human imagination reveals the possibilities of world-making (Power et al., 2023). But what is the form and content of people’s imaginations during a global pandemic, and what are the societal, cultural, and political consequences of the virus, for people’s 414 Culture & Psychology 30(2) imaginings of the future? One meaningful way to conceptualize the social worlds people live in, or would like to live in, is along a moral dimension. Imagining moves us from is (i.e., a description of the current state of things) to what could be (i.e., a descriptive account of alternative possibilities to the current state of things) but also what should be (i.e., a moral account of how things ought to be). The move from is to could be, and from there to should be, requires an articulation of perspectives on morality. Accordingly, we now turn to different perspectives on morality, and how these might be revealed or implicated in the process of imagining. Morality Morality binds our causes together for imagining more fair, equitable, and just future worlds. It also blinds us to a plethora of infinite possible future worlds. Indeed, when people imagine what they might hope for (or fear) from the future, they often refer to moral progress (or decline, e.g., Bain et al., 2013; Bain et al., 2015). Yet, beyond the general significance of morality for the future, from this research it is unclear which morals are of concern, and there is likely to be considerable divergence between people (perhaps also genders, Gilligan, 1993; but see also Ryan et al., 2004) and across societies in the focus of moral imagining. Theoretical models of morality suggest some key points of divergence. One perspective, “The Big Three of Morality” (Shweder, 2003; Shweder et al., 1997), is located within cultural anthropology and was developed through comparative ethnographic research using thematic and discursive qualitative methods across the United States and India. This theory identifies a moral ethic of Autonomy - focusing on in dividual rights, justice, and the prevention of harm - as prevalent in Western liberal democracies. Outside Western liberal democracies, however, heavier emphasis is placed on both the ethics of Community and on the ethics of Divinity. Community focuses on themes of duty, hierarchy, and interdependence. Divinity focuses on a sacred order immanent in the world, and the structuring of individual thinking, feeling, and acting, around this sacred order (also see Jensen, 2015). The Big Three of Morality has more recently been extended into “Moral Foundations Theory,” a perspective located more in social psychology and grounded in quantitative and experimental methods (Haidt, 2012). The crux ofthe theory is that individual’s reason intuitively (i.e., emotionally) about moral phenomena. Said simply, what people think of as moral is a “gut reaction” rather than something that is carefully thought through. This theory has mainly been applied to comprehend the culture wars within the United States (Haidt, 2012). For example, disagreements about what constitutes morally acceptable behavior tend not to stem from concrete arguments about the issues at stake. Instead, disagreements stem from the different frameworks through which they understand what it means to be moral in the first place, and how they instinctively feel when their moral priorities are violated. Moral emotions and moral reasoning underlie support for, and resistance to, different violations of moral expectations. Beyond appraisals ofwhat is considered good and bad in the present, perspectives like these are useful for conceptualizing the terms under which different individuals, and Power et al. 415 which cultural groups, moralize about the way the world is and imagine how it could or should be. The Current Research In the current research - informed by the previous perspectives - we analyze discourse generated from interviewing a sample of people living in Denmark during the first months of the Covid-19 pandemic, along two intersecting vectors, creating quadrants. One di mension, derived from abductive analyses of our data, focuses on individual to collective imaginings. The second vector is descriptive to moral imaginings. The two vectors intersect, creating individual and collective descriptive imaginings and individual and collective moral imaginings. This model of imaginings of possible futures, elicited from the rupture caused by Covid-19 and the lockdown policies that accompanied it, both uniquely joins theorizing in moral psychology with theories of imagination, and through this combination, creates a framework for conceptualizing the scopes and limits of discursive articulation of possible future worlds. Before presenting the analysis, we detail our methodology. Methods Timing and Sampling Data was obtained from interviews with citizens living in Denmark, during June and July 2020. These data are part of a larger project investigating responses to the pandemic over its initial months, including both quantitative and qualitative data collection. The in terview data reported here have also been used in a parallel publication focusing on the meaning and importance of trust in understanding Covid-19 responses (Power et al., 2023). At the time interviews were conducted, vaccines against the virus were not yet available and Danish society had faced severe restrictions for several months, though a moderate re-opening of society had begun. As part of an interview schedule aimed at understanding people’s experiences and meaning-making during Covid-19, interviewees were directly asked to imagine changes in their personal lives as well as broader societal consequences resulting from the largely unprecedented pandemic. Interviewees (n = 21) were sampled from a corpus of respondents to a larger quantitative survey that used a weekly ‘diary’ method to document the everyday behaviors and experiences of respondents (see Kahneman, et al., 2004). This survey commenced during the lockdown on April 2, 2020, and continued until mid-July. In one iteration of the weekly diary survey, we asked respondents if they would be willing to be contacted by a member of the research team to partake in an interview, in English, on Skype or over the telephone. 642 people agreed. From this pool, we purposefully selected a sample of interviewees representing the whole range of the different levels of trust expressed by respondents in our sample and eventually conducted 21 in-depth interviews. The semi-structured interviews lasted about 20-60 minutes and were conducted by the first author. All interviews took place online. They were audio recorded and these 416 Culture & Psychology 30(2) recordings were deleted after transcription, and anonymization of identities, and identifying information. Pseudonyms are used throughout. All participants gave informed consent. The study was approved by the ethics committee of the Department of Psychology, University of Copenhagen. Overall, we interviewed a broad sample of people living in Denmark. Thirteen were Danish and six migrated as adults for higher education or work to Denmark having been born in Cyprus, Romania, Spain, Hungary, Northern Ireland, and Slovenia, and two from Italy. Eleven were women, 10 were men. Interviewees were of a broad adult age, ranging from late teens to late seventies. Some were young people who were completing university education, others had professional careers, and others were at retirement age. Several were unemployed, others were in secure professional jobs, and there were reported disparities in income and wealth. Some interviewees were single, others were in romantic relationships or married, others were divorced, and others bereaved. Despite the physical distance of interviewing people online, the first author felt connected to the interviewees who openly shared their honest experiences in relation to the questions. The interview schedule took a narrative approach and followed a temporal format. That is, interviewees were asked questions about the past, present, and future. Questions about the past were used primarily to initiate the interview and participants recalled their experiences during the first days of Covid-19 and the sudden Danish lockdown in March 2020. Questions were then asked about the present, such as their opinions on current reopening policies, trust in other stakeholders in Danish society, and how the pandemic was being dealt with in neighboring Sweden (a topical point of comparison at that time because Sweden, in contrast to many other nations in the Global North, were slow to introduce any pandemic restrictions). The final set of questions in the interview schedule were concerned with imagining the end of the pandemic and individual and social life beyond the end. No specific question was asked about morality (i.e., what an individual’s life, or societal direction, should look like). Instead, interviewees were prompted to imagine how the pandemic would end and how life (for oneself and one’s close rela tionships as well as for society) would be after Covid-19. For example, participants were asked “how do you imagine life after the pandemic?” and “what, if any, consequences do you imagine the pandemic will have in the future?” It is the data generated from these last semi-structured questions, informed by the narrative flow of the interviews, and understood within the broader cultural and situational context in which the interview was conducted, that are of particular interest in the forthcoming analysis. Form of Analysis Grounded in a pragmatist ontology (Peirce, 1955), we used a dynamic abductive approach to interpreting our data. That is, we combined inductive (bottom up) reading of transcribed interview material, with deductive (from theory) coding of passages concerned explicitly or implicitly with imagining beyond the pandemic. Abduction, an ontological pragmatic interpretative strategy, seeks explanation of psychological and social phenomena by taking a creative leap and generating theories - at the nexus of deduction and induction - to comprehend data and form new knowledge. As such, abduction entails Power et al. 417 theorizing beyond observed data and prior expectations to form new theoretical frameworks to comprehend psychological and societal phenomena (Gillespie, in press). Specifically, the abductive approach allowed us to innovate a novel four quadrant model, by synthesizing and combining literature on socio-cultural psychology of imagination and the cultural psychology of morality. This allowed us to create a semi-flexible framework to theoretically comprehend the discourses and meanings of our transcribed interview data. We use two qualitative methods in conjunction to help understand the substance and forms of our transcribed interview data. Thematic analysis was used to broadly code the data and to identify interpretations of interest (Braun & Clarke, 2006). Discourse analysis was used to examine more finely the ways in which respondents discursively constructed their imaginings (Potter & Wetherell, 1987). The model allows us to thematically sort the content of the interview data (whether emphasis is placed on individual or collective discourse or on descriptive or moral discourse). Discourse analysis allows us to analyze how participants talk about, position, and represent aspects of their imagined everyday lives beyond the nascent global pandemic. Triangulating the content and meaning of our interviewees discourse via multiple methods offers a more holistic approach towards understanding how participants imagined, and ultimately, attempt to manifest possible future selves. Analysis The analysis reports imaginings of the future on two planes individual and collective; descriptive and moral. On a descriptive and individual level, people imagined getting through the pandemic on a myopic day-by day basis; on a descriptive and collective level, people imagined changes to work and socializing. Their imagined future is directly shaped by their immediate present. On a moral and individual level, respondents were less detailed in their reports, but some vowed to change their behaviors. On a moral and collective level, respondents reported what their world should be like and discussed changes to environmental behaviors such as traveling, commuting, and work. Not all the discourse could be neatly sorted into one of four quadrants. Respondents slipped between descriptive, moral, individual, and collective, discourses. Yet overall meaningful thematic and discursive patterns could be analytically and theoretically interpreted. We chose illustrative extracts to exemplify each of the quadrants. The data suggests the domain of collective moral imaginings is the most expansive domain for people to imagine beyond the bounded practicalities of their everyday lives to generate social change. Yet, making these moral imaginings manifest - through individual behaviors based on their individual moral imaginings - was less obvious. It can be difficult to imagine the future. This was particularly evident for some participants when they were asked to imagine what life would be like beyond the pandemic. Even the framing of the question itself located people’s imaginings of the future in relation to the pandemic (discussing experiences during the pandemic also framed their responses). In this way, what can be imagined is bound to the past, and limited by immediate context, and the dialogical construction of knowledge, between interviewer and interviewee. For example, Soren was asked how he imagines the 418 Culture & Psychology 30(2) pandemic will unfold in Denmark. He took time to think, and before formulating his answer, he said “Well.. .predicting the future is a hard job.” Although this is a seemingly mundane statement, it is revealing of the difficulty respondents have in imagining the future from an uncertain present. The same linguistic feature of delaying - with a view to decoupling from the here and now to project into the future and back again to give an answer in an interview setting - is omnipresent throughout the corpus of interview data. Part I: Individual Descriptive Discourse Mette, who was an engaging conversationalist during the interview, delays when she was asked to imagine the future beyond the pandemic. She stated “That’s a good question. A very good question.” Here Mette repeats her compliment to create time and space to think about an answer to this question. By delaying in this way, she takes time to orientate her answer, which is also revealing of the limited reach of imagining. Mette proceeded to say the following: “In a way I can just cope with the closest future (laughs). Also, because it’s impossible to know how it will be, but also, because it’s difficult to capture more in (...) one’s own mind. So (...) I think I have the perspective of (...) the next, or the two next months, the summer months. Then I can’t (.) tell or can’t foretell or (.) imagine how it will be. But, of course, I could believe that there will be a second wave of it in the (.) autumn time, but. Yeah, but right now I feel quite optimistic about everything. [...] I will just do (...) my own forholdsregler [precautions], my own rules still hoping to go to our home [to her childhood house, owned by her mother, in Norway].” This form of response is representative of the first of four quadrants in the model which, following an abductive ontology, both emerged from, and informed, the structure of the overall analysis. The discourse is focused on the descriptive domain, as well as being largely focused on oneself. Ref lecting her initial responses used to delay, she jokingly asserted “In a way I can just cope with the closest future.” Here the orientation is firmly placed on the individual “ I can just cope with.” In this short extract, she repeated the word “I” seven times. She also used other individualizing words such as “ one’s own mind” and “my own rules.” These further served to locate her imagining of the future within the ethics of autonomy, where the focus is less on community or divinity, and more on individual autonomy; a moral framework concerned with individual well-being. The content of this extract reveals important processes used in imagining. Congruent with the earlier focus on the difficulty in articulating what is yet to become, the frequent pauses - far less evident within the flow of the entire interview until she was asked to speculate on the future beyond the pandemic - suggest further micro-delays used in the de-coupling and re-coupling processes of leaving the here and now to project into the future and articulate this projection. Delaying, and focusing on what is more certain (oneself over others), reveals the boundaries at the horizon of imagining. Finally, the content of her imagining is local and expressly tied to the Covid-19 pandemic. Specifically, she stated ‘I can’t foretell or imagine how it will be’. Yet, when Power et al. 425 need to do the lockdown again, let’s follow the rules as well, not just say: “Okay but I know that it’s something that’s going to be passed after some months, no, just keep on with this.” Her response is clearly located within the ethics of community as it was directly concerned with protecting other people by using “hand sanitizer” and maintaining physical “distancing.” Interestingly, she used the word “we” at the beginning of her sentence to encompass the collective when making her moral statement. Her ethical focus is based on concern for protecting the elderly. Although she said that for her, personally, her main network does not contain many older people, she still expressed concern for older people and focuses attention of the government-endorsed protective measures that people living in Denmark can do to protect the vulnerable. This moral imperative is to be continued, according to Christina, until “we maybe can get a vaccine.” Imaginations of possible futures are always filled with hopes and anxieties. Christina hoped that in the future there will be a vaccine, with its promised immunity, and imagined return to “normal life.” This is a specific and practical imagination with a dual function. First, she uses it “to be strong, to keep going.” And second, looping back to the present from this imagining of increased immunity from vaccination, allowed her to familiarize the unfamiliar, to become “acquainted with the new normal.” Consequently, this allows her to advocate a firm moral position that she voiced to imagined others within her extended community “let’s follow the rules ...just keep on with this.” This proscriptive moral statement was motivated by a communal ethic of protecting the vulnerable. Extending from societal based moral discourse located within the ethic of community, and focused on collective, rather than individual responsibility, the third specific content area as well as work, and health, was environment. Anders noted: “I think you ought to reflect on how different you actually make the society if you decide to do so. And I think that the idea that the political system cannot steer the economy more intensely, is. we have falsified that hypothesis, because we saw that it is indeed possible. Of course, it will have huge consequences for, for example, the airline industries. But I mean if you’re willing to make an effort, then you can solve the climate crisis quite easily, I think. Of course, we need to change a lot of things, and I know that I speak from a more privileged position, because my job could continue and there are a lot of people who are able to do so. But I think that that’s a very interesting thing to think more seriously about. And I think that, I mean, Coronavirus is deadly but it’s not like it’s going to kill the whole population of the world, but the climate crisis could potentially kill all of humanity. So, I think that we need even more strong measures for the climate crisis, and I think that this should be the impetus to the politicians to show that we could actually change quite a lot if we decided to do so.” Anders’ opening phrase is loaded morally. The word “ought” is a key gateway word to move from everyday description to moral proscription. Anders imagined the rupture caused by the pandemic creates space to rethink society if there is a decision to do so. To support this point, he refers to the involvement of the Danish government in the economy. He was referring to the government enforced lockdown of businesses, financial support of 426 Culture & Psychology 30(2) business and individuals unable to work, and sensible financial and social protections concerning workers and the unemployed. Anders imagined the same logic can be applied to mitigate the disastrous consequences of anthropogenic climate change “if you’re willing to make the effort.” By drawing on political involvement in the local Danish economic system, he imagined a near-future scenario where similar government-led interventions can solve ‘the climate crisis quite easily.” In contrast to the examples in part one and part three of the analysis, where it was difficult for participants to formulate (descriptive or moral) individualistic accounts, it is easier to articulate grander imaginings of solving a problem like climate change that “could potentially kill all of humanity,” without giving specific details of how this might be achieved or how he, as an individual, might contribute towards this effort. Yet, he reaffirmed his moral position, acknowledging the self-identified privileged position from which it comes, that the pandemic “should be the impetus” to help combat climate change. Similar to the use of the word ‘ought’ at the beginning of the extract, the word ‘should’ also shifts his statement from the descriptive to the moral realm of discourse. In contrast to part three, the focus of this moral discourse is on communal ethics and the moral imagining is discussed at the level of humanity. Conclusion The societal, cultural, and economic rupture caused by the novel Covid-19 virus opened space for people to imagine possible futures. This imagining occurred from a liminal position: the lockdown of Danish society was an extraordinary policy, and yet it involved deep familiarity. Against this conflicting and unfamiliar yet familiar backdrop, participants were prompted to imagine life beyond the pandemic. The four-quadrant model presented in this study with individual and collective on one vector, and descriptive and moral on the next vector, offers a novel way to categorize this future-oriented discourse along four inter-related quadrants. One theoretical novelty of the model is to introduce the moral domain into research, and theorizing, regarding the psychology of imagination, which has been largely focused on descriptive forms of imagination (e.g., Zittoun & Gillespie, 2015). When people decouple from the here and now, project into the future, and loop back to the present and articulate possible futures, the communicated content of their imaginings can be both descriptive and proscriptive. The application of ‘The Big Three of Morality” to this developmental looping process offers one empirically based cultural psychological theory to think through various ethical domains (autonomy, community, divinity) that work as schemas sculpting the scopes and limits of descriptive and moral imagining and the consequences these imaginings have for thought, talk, and action in the present. Future research might examine imagining across cultural contexts and how different ethical frameworks offer, and curb, the articulation of possible individual and collective futures. For example, recent research with children in New York examined their utopian rep resentation of ideal future societies from the point of view of an ethics of autonomy (Jost, et al., 2022). The content of these representations focused on economic prosperity and cultural sensitivity. Yet future research with participants who are less secular, and more Power et al. 427 religious, might draw on an ethics of divinity, to a greater degree than was evident in our respondents’ discourse, to guide imaginations ofpossible fUtures through culturally and religiously relative moral narratives, symbols, and frameworks. We argue that categorizing the form and meaning of our interviewees’ imaginings beyond the pandemic is theoretically generative. Specifically, we argue that the importance of the positioning of this discourse and its demarcation into quadrants, offers a framework to think through the possibilities and limitations of human imagining. This is because imagining is a central psychological process - at once individual and cultural - that lies at the basis of world-making. That is, engaging with people’s expressions about the future, whether on individual or collective levels, about what the world could or should be like, offers a scaffold to comprehend expansions of human thought and po tential action concerning the subjective worlds which are to be formed (or maintained) first by imagining (or not imagining differently), and then acting (or failing to act) on these imaginations. Our modest framework - at the nexus of morality and imagination - holds promise for both comprehending how societies can, and should, change and how the status quo is maintained. The empirical evidence presented here suggests a disconnect between the ability to imagine possible futures on an individual and collective level. People can readily articulate possible futures on a broad, communal, and global level. Yet, the evidence presented here suggests it is more difficult to descriptively imagine one’s personal future but also to normatively imagine how oneself might contribute towards realizing a better possible future, if there is a desire to do so. Practically, with regard to addressing pressing social issues - as discussed by the participants (health systems; work environments; climate change) - it is important to realize the gaps between collective and individualistic solutions, and between descriptive and moral frame works. These gaps entail limitations for taking actions to realize (moral) imaginings and to engage with ‘good’ or ‘bad’ world-making. It is unclear whether the gap between collective moral imaginings and individual actions to realize more ethical future societies is particular to the context of the Covid-19 pandemic or is a more general phenomenon. The global pandemic caused by the spread of the Covid-19 virus involved unequal vaccination rates, different lockdown protocols, the emergence of new variants, and changing perspectives on safety and risk within and between citizens in different countries. Despite these changing circumstances, and the likelihood of changing meaning-making ofthe pandemic, future research would benefit from interviewing people about their imaginings of the future at different points during future (global) crises. Indeed, one implication of the looping metaphor used to analyze these data implies that being asked to articulate their projections of the future informs participants’ actions (or inactions) towards making manifest their particular version of the future. Longitudinal interviews could delve deeper into this implication by revealing stable or changing patterns of imagining and resulting behaviors across time. Naturally occurring textual data - in the form of blogs, diaries, social media posts - could overcome the limitation of co-constructing data in the form of interviews that direct participants to think explicitly about the future by examining the ways people are imagining the future at different points 428 Culture & Psychology 30(2) in the pandemic without the intrusion of the interviewer (see Power & Velez, 2022; Webb et al., 1999). Imagining, describing, and moralizing are three ways humans construct possible worlds and the actual world in which we live. Understanding the reaches and contours of human imagination offers the potential to overcome present challenges and create fairer, more just and sustainable, future societies. Declaration of Conflicting Interests The author(s) declared no potential conflicts of interest with respect to the research, authorship, and/ or publication of this article. Funding The author(s) disclosed receipt ofthe following financial support for the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article: This study is supported by University of Copenhagen, Faculty of Social Science. ORCID iD Seamus A Power © https://orcid.org/0000-0001-6770-4756 References Bain, P. G., Hornsey, M. J., Bongiorno, R., Kashima, Y., & Crimston, D. (2013). Collective futures: How projections about the future of society are related to actions and attitudes supporting social change. Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin, 39(4), 523-539. https://doi.org/10.1177/ 0146167213478200 Bain, P. G., Kroonenberg, P. M., & Kashima, Y. (2015). Cultural beliefs about societal change: A three-mode principal component analysis in China, Australia, and Japan. 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Author Biographies Seamus A Power is an Associate Professor at the Department of Psychology at the University of Copenhagen M erlin Schaeffer is a Professor at the Department of Sociology at the University of Copenhagen Jan P Heisig is a Professor of Sociology at the WZB Berlin Social Science Center and at the Freie Universität Berlin Rebecca Udsen, M.A., is a researcher at the Department of Sociology at the University of Copenhagen Liisalotte O rdonez-B ueso, M.A., is a researcher at the Department of Psychology at the University of Copenhagen Thomas M orto n is a Professor at the Department of Psychology at the University of Copenhagen.