Is the Future Bright or Bleak? Assessing Past and Future Outlooks Across the Adult Lifespan

Abstract

An individual’s outlook on society can change over time and can be related to both their physical and mental health. Here, we developed an instrument to measure outlooks on the past and future in relation to the present in 413 adults ranging in age from 18 to 80 years. Exploratory and confirmatory factor analyses were conducted on independent samples and test–retest reliability was assessed in a subset of participants. Construct validity of the two past and future scales was assessed by relating them to 1) pre-existing scales measuring related constructs, and 2) beliefs and safety behaviors during the COVID-19 pandemic. The final Bright or Bleak Scale (BOBS) consists of a past and future scale, each with two factors measuring societal and personal outlooks. Brighter future societal and personal outlooks were positively associated with longer future time perspectives, while self-reporting a higher likelihood of already having contracted COVID-19 was related to bleaker past societal and personal outlooks.

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Gerontology & Geriatric Medicine
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DOI: 10.1177/23337214211046080
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Is the Future Bright or Bleak? Assessing Past
and Future Outlooks Across the Adult
Lifespan
Katie M. Silaj, MA
1
, Shawn T. Schwartz, BS
1
, Alan D. Castel, PhD
1
, and
Ian M. McDonough, PhD
2,3

Abstract
An individual’s outlook on society can change over time and can be related to both their physical and mental health. Here, we
developed an instrument to measure outlooks on the past and future in relation to the present in 413 adults ranging in age from
18 to 80 years. Exploratory and confirmatory factor analyses were conducted on independent samples and test–retest reliability
was assessed in a subset of participants. Construct validity of the two past and future scales was assessed by relating them to 1)
pre-existing scales measuring related constructs, and 2) beliefs and safety behaviors during the COVID-19 pandemic. The final
Bright or Bleak Scale (BOBS) consists of a past and future scale, each with two factors measuring societal and personal outlooks.
Brighter future societal and personal outlooks were positively associated with longer future time perspectives, while self-
reporting a higher likelihood of already having contracted COVID-19 was related to bleaker past societal and personal outlooks.
Keywords
aging, life satisfaction, mental health, COVID-19, societal outlooks
Manuscript received: May 20, 2021; final revision received: July 22, 2021; accepted: August 26, 2021.
Is the Future Bright or Bleak? Assessing Past
and Future Outlooks Across the
Adult Lifespan
The past 40 years have brought a wealth of new products,
technology, and modernized forms of healthcare which have
transformed the ways people in society socialize, conduct
business, and begin families. Despite providing higher
standards of living, these new technologies have required
increased energy consumption in industrialized nations and
increased carbon dioxide emissions, which are contributing to
global climate change and an uncertain future for humanity
(Chang & Lee, 2008). The ever-changing societal landscape
is multifaceted (i.e., environmental, social, economic), and
the lens through which people view these changes may be
influenced by both historical and personal life experiences.
From a historical perspective, the Civil Rights Act contrib-
uted to progressive legislation on issues such as affirmative
action and sexual harassment (Aiken et al., 2013), illustrating
progress from the past to the present. Yet, an overrepresen-
tation of COVID-19 deaths in Black American communities
has further exacerbated the already-present systemic barriers
to accessing adequate healthcare faced by communities of
color (Leitch et al., 2020). In both contexts, some may
perceive the past as bleaker than now, especially for those
who have faced systemic or personal tragedies, be it dis-
crimination or losing their loved ones during the pandemic.
Global changes and events may also shape personal and
societal perceptions of the future. In a survey investigating
the relationship between beliefs about globalization and
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1
Department of Psychology, University of California, Los Angeles, CA, USA
2
Department of Psychology, University of Alabama, Tuscaloosa, Alabama
3
Alabama Research Institute on Aging, Tuscaloosa, Alabama
Corresponding Author:
Katie M. Silaj, Department of Psychology, University of California, Los
Angeles, CA 90095, USA. kmsilaj@ucla.edu

perceptions of society, people thought future society would
be more affluent, but less moral (Kashima et al., 2011). Today,
the civil unrest due to continued police brutality against Black
individuals, including the murder of George Floyd, has un-
derscored the need for the Black Lives Matter movement and
reinvigorated broader societal participation in social move-
ments calling for large structural changes to ultimately
achieve a brighter, more equitable future society. Thus,
outlooks on the past may be informed by historical events
either lived through or observed, and present challenges and
movements may subsequently shape outlooks on the future.
Though these findings inform our knowledge of the re-
lationship between personal beliefs and evaluations of the
past, present, and future of society, more work is needed to
understand the influence of past and future perspectives of
society on present-day behavior, mental health, and well-
being. In the present study, we designed and validated an
instrument to measure personal and societal outlooks of the
past and future compared to the present day.
Theoretical Motivation
Socioemotional Selectivity Theory (SST; Carstensen, 2006)
posits that as people age and their future time expansion
becomes more limited, people shift their focus from future- to
present-oriented goals, such as obtaining satisfaction and
emotional meaning. However, such shifts can also occur in
situations when people are reminded of the fragility of their
own lives (e.g., the Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome
epidemic in Hong Kong; Fung & Carstensen, 2006). Simi-
larly, a global pandemic (i.e., novel coronavirus disease 2019;
COVID-19) may constrain perceptions of future time ex-
pansion, causing a shift in goals and outlooks of the future,
especially since COVID-19 has disrupted daily life for many
and has engendered heightened feelings of uncertainty about
the future (Polizzi et al., 2020).
Perceptions of the Present on the Future and the Past. Although
people’s goals might shift due to acute circumstances,
maintaining feelings of hopefulness can be beneficial for the
mental health of people experiencing stressful events, such as
wildfires or terrorist attacks (Holman, 2015). Hope may also
be important for coping during the COVID-19 pandemic.
Research has suggested that joint decreases in life satisfaction
and feelings of hope experienced during the COVID-19
pandemic could impact the amount of stress due to
COVID-19 people experience (Trzebi´
nski et al., 2020). At the
onset of COVID-19, some older adults demonstrated a de-
crease in preventative health behaviors driven by one’s levels
of optimism (Pasion et al., 2020). Consistent with SST, these
findings highlight how aging impacts one’s outlook on life,
especially during stressful periods. Older adults are more
optimistic in general (Arrindell et al., 1999), have higher
expectations regarding aging well, and report being more
concerned about COVID-19 specifically relative to younger
adults (Whatley et al., 2020). Though, due to a longer future
time perspective, younger adults may have more motivation
to maintain goals and hope for the future relative to older
adults. Thus, age may be a factor contributing to outlooks on
the future of society, in addition to outlooks for one’s personal
life.
Current life circumstances can shape perceptions not only
of the future but also of the past. Such perceptions of the past
can affect current well-being (Carstensen & Mikels, 2005),
and failing to accept the past can lead to depressive symptoms
(Santor & Zuroff, 1994). Present behavior, such as pro-
crastination, can also be influenced by negative perceptions of
the past (Jackson et al., 2003). Furthermore, aging may in-
dependently impact outlooks on the past. Qualitative evi-
dence suggests that successful aging is related to accepting
the past (Reichstadt et al., 2010), and quantitative evidence
suggests that negative affect in memories is forgotten more
often than positive affect in memories (Skowronski et al.,
2014). This shift in the emotional affect of memories in-
creases with age, potentially helping older adults regulate
their current emotional state (Conway & Pleydell-Pearce,
2000). Together, perceptions of the future and past may
impact decision-making, health, and well-being in the
present.
Effects of Physical Distancing on Mental Health During COVID-
19. The COVID-19 pandemic has resulted in a decrease in
social interactions, increasing feelings of isolation in older
adults due to living alone or in assisted living facilities
(Pasion et al., 2020), as well as a decrease in social events in
younger adults. These social declines, combined with other
life changes (e.g., financial stressors), have led to spikes in
depression rates in adults of all ages (Ettman et al., 2020).
Prior to the pandemic, people with higher neuroticism tended
to have more frequent health-related Internet searches, and
these searches tended to be positively related to age (Bogg &
Vo, 2014). On the contrary, COVID-19 may prompt people to
engage in more frequent health-related Internet searches out
of fear to ultimately protect themselves from the virus (Du
et al., 2020), and expectedly such an effect would be stronger
in people with higher neuroticism. Given that both de-
pression and neuroticism can color one’s perceptions neg-
atively beyond what the present circumstances might warrant
(Scheier et al., 1994), the present study accounted for in-
dividual differences in depressive symptoms and neuroti-
cism, especially when so many people have faced financial,
mental health, and other obstacles due to COVID-19.
Development and Validation of the Bright or Bleak
Scale (BOBS)
In the current study, we developed an instrument to measure
outlooks on the past and future, and examined the reliability
and validity of the instrument in a diverse lifespan sample. By
independently assessing outlooks at both time scales, we
2Gerontology & Geriatric Medicine

could identify the potential existence of temporal asymme-
tries in such perspectives (cf. McDonough & Gallo, 2010,
2013). Creating and validating these instruments across the
adult lifespan afforded us an opportunity to test for rela-
tionships with age in these outlooks. The new scales were
tested in independent samples, and reliability was assessed in
a subset of the original sample. Validity of these two new
scales was assessed by relating them to (a) existing scales
measuring overlapping (but perhaps distinct ideas) and (b)
health behaviors associated with COVID-19. The existing
validation scales were related to sociodemographics (age,
education, and financial stability), health (subjective age,
expectations regarding age, and dementia risk), well-being
(satisfaction with life and hope), and temporal orientation
(accepting the past and future time perspective). Given the
potential for substantial influences of depressive symptoms
and neuroticism on past and future outlooks on life, we report
associations with the validation measures both prior to and
after accounting for those influences.
Methods
Participants
The survey was given to 413 participants residing in the
United States via CloudResearch’s MTurk Toolkit online
platform (https://www.cloudresearch.com/products/turkprime-
mturk-toolkit/) that optimizes recruitment through Amazon
Mechanical Turk (MTurk) and aides in preventing data
quality issues (e.g., fraud, inattentiveness; Litman et al.,
2017). Such methods offer reliable and effective data col-
lection for psychological research when compared to tradi-
tional in-lab testing for behavioral tasks (Siegel et al., 2020).
MTurk workers compared with a national U.S. census-
matched normative sample supplied similar quality data
across a variety of psychological dimensions while also
uncovering characteristics of higher negative affect and lower
social engagement (McCredie & Morey, 2019). Other
comparison studies have found a high degree of general-
ization and also an increased range of responses, including
higher rates of neuroticism (Goodman et al., 2013) and social
detachment (Miller et al., 2017).
The initial sample (n= 207) was collected between August
7, 2020 and August 13, 2020, and a subsample (n= 92) retook
portions of the survey on September 18, 2020 for test–retest
reliability. Two new confirmatory samples (n= 206) were
collected between September 9, 2020 and September 27,
2020 that did not include the re-tested participants. Across all
participants, ages ranged from 18 to 80 years (M= 43.31
years, SD = 17.75 years), and additional effort was made to
recruit ethnoracial minorities using demographic filters on
CloudResearch’s MTurk Toolkit to provide a diverse and
more generalizable set of perspectives (see Supplementary
Appendix A Table 1). Although we hesitate to claim that the
samples are nationally representative, they were highly
diverse with respect to age, socioeconomic status, and eth-
noracial group.
We also acknowledge that various regions and nations
across the globe have experienced differential government
and societal responses and impact with respect to the COVID-
19 pandemic. Across the United States, the state of COVID-
19 rapidly evolved during periods of data collection for this
study; thus, re-tested participants refers to initial responses to
the survey items from the present situation in which they
referred to when responding the second time. The changing
context during data collection included the following: on
August 11, 2020, the Trump administration reportedly made a
$1.5 billion (USD) deal with Moderna for 100 million
vaccine doses. During the 1-month period between initial data
collection and the collection of both the test-retest and
confirmatory samples, COVID-19 became the third-leading
cause of death in the United States and the first reinfection
case was reported in the United States (see https://www.ajmc.
com/view/a-timeline-of-covid19-developments-in-2020 for a
timeline of key COVID-19 developments in 2020). Despite
these developments, we expected individual circumstances to
remain fairly stable across timepoints.
Materials
Existing Scales Used to Assess Construct Validity. Using the final
version of the BOBS, we provided evidence for construct
validity by demonstrating relationships with expected similar
questionnaires collapsing across the two confirmatory sam-
ples. These tests also shed light on how perceptions of the
past and future are tightly coupled (i.e., a general positive
outlook) or whether asymmetries exist such that each is
assessing qualitatively different types of positive outlooks.
The scales used for these validation purposes were: life
satisfaction measured by the Satisfaction with Life Scale
(SWLS; Diener et al., 1985), how much one has accepted the
past measured by the Accepting the Past scale (ACPAST;
Santor & Zuroff, 1994), one’s risk for dementia measured by
The LIfestyle for BRAin health index (LIBRA; Deckers et al.,
2019), one’s expectations about aging measured by the
Expectations Regarding Aging scale (ERA; Sarkisian et al.,
2005), hope measured by the Revised Life Orientation Test
(LOT-R; Scheier et al., 1994), future time expansion mea-
sured by the Future Time Perspective Scale (FTPS;
Carstensen & Lang, 1996), socioeconomic status measured
by Economic Strain (Pearlin et al., 1981), depression mea-
sured by the Center for Epidemiological Studies Depression
Scale (CESD; Radloff, 1977), and neuroticism measured by
the Midlife Development Inventory (MIDI; Lachman &
Weaver, 1997). Extended descriptions of these scales can
be found in Supplementary Appendix B. Because of the many
correlations conducted with these measures, we set our alpha
threshold to .005 (Benjamin et al., 2018). We conducted
analyses both prior to and after accounting for depres-
sive symptoms and neuroticism as recommended for
Silaj et al. 3

observational studies (Von Elm et al., 2007). For brevity, we
report the results after accounting for these influences only if
the relationships were no longer significant.
Survey Development. Thirty-two questions distributed across
six categories (products, technology, health, social, family,
and “overall”perceptions) were created to gauge one’s
outlook on either the past or future in comparison with today.
Two methods were used to increase face validity of the scales.
First, each item was reviewed by three experts in the field of
aging with a combined experience of 41 years such that each
item represented a personal or societal concern that has been
encountered or might be encountered by aging adults. Sec-
ond, two free-response questions were asked at the end of
each block prompting participants to describe why they
thought the past/future was/will be bright or bleak, which
were used to validate the content of the questions. A past and
future version of these questions were created such that the
statements were to be compared either to one’s perception of
life (or belief of what life was like) 40 years ago or to one’s
perceptions of life 40 years from now (regardless of whether
the person was/will be alive at either time). We used a 40-year
outlook to help people focus on “big picture”perspectives
outside of recent day-to-day experiences. Additionally, using
a specific year anchored everyone to a common timeline
rather than vaguely specifying the “future”or “past.”All
questions were rated on a 1 (strongly disagree)to5(strongly
agree) scale. Each set of questions were blocked such that all
the past items or all the future items came first. Following
elimination of items (see Results), the final scales each
consisted of nine items from the health, social, family, and
“overall”perceptions categories (see Tables 1 and 2).
Procedure
The first section of the survey consisted of blocks of either the
past or future questions, counterbalanced across participants.
For confirmatory samples, the middle section of the survey
consisted of a subset of validation questionnaires. A subset of
the validating questionnaires was used in both the original
and retest participants; however, given the original sample
was not independent from the creation of the questionnaire,
we did not conduct correlations between BOBS and the
established measures for those participants. The last section
Table 1. Standardized Loadings for the Final Confirmatory Factor Analysis for BOBS Past Scale.
Item
Final CFA
F1 F2
The world is a better place now than it was 40 years ago. (R) .69 ––
A child born today is better off than a child born 40 years ago. (R) .53 ––
When playing around the neighborhood unsupervised, children are safer today than in the past. (R) .60 ––
Older adults are living a better life now than in the past. (R) .47 ––
The government plays a more positive role in our life now than in the past. (R) .73 ––
Today it is better to raise a child in this country than another country compared to the past. (R) .52 ––
Overall, the past was bleak for my friends and family. (R) –– .89
Overall, the past was bleak for me. (R) –– .70
Overall, the past was bleak for humankind. (R) –– .66
Notes: R = reverse-scored items. Items were scored so that a higher value indicates a “brighter”attitude across scales.
Table 2. Standardized Loadings for the Final Confirmatory Factor Analysis for BOBS Future Scale.
Item
Final CFA
F1 F2
A child born 40 years from now will be better off than a child born today. .59 ––
It will be easier in the future for an average middle-income American to become financially secure than it is today. .63 ––
People will be healthier in the future than today. .70 ––
When playing around the neighborhood unsupervised, children will be safer in the future than today. .57 ––
Older adults will live a better life in the future than now. .66 ––
It will be easier to maintain friendships in the future. .56 ––
Overall, the future is bleak for my friends and family. (R) –– .88
Overall, the future is bleak for me. (R) –– .78
Overall, the future is bleak for humankind. (R) –– .77
Notes: R = reverse-scored items. Items were scored so that a higher value indicates a “brighter”attitude across scales.
4Gerontology & Geriatric Medicine

always consisted of demographic and health questions, and
questions asking participants to rate how likely it is that they
have already contracted/will contract COVID-19, how many
friends/family members have tested positive for COVID-19,
how worried friends/family are about contracting COVID-19,
and how well they have been following quarantine guidelines
for their geographic area. Participants who completed at least
the past or future questions were included in the sample to
have as many data points as possible. All study procedures
were approved by the Institutional Review Boards of the
University of California, Los Angeles, and the University of
Alabama.
Results
Exploratory and Confirmatory Factor Analyses
The first sample (n= 207) was used to conduct exploratory
factor analyses to reduce the number of survey items. These
results can be found in the Supplementary Materials. Free
responses indicated that the questionnaire, overall, evoked
thoughts about social, economic, COVID-19, quality of life,
and family issues (for sample quotes from participants see
Supplementary Table S4). These responses provide insight
into the factors being considered by participants and, for
some, how the pandemic was an influence.
The resulting set of items were given to 103 new par-
ticipants and entered into two separate confirmatory factor
analyses (CFAs): one for the past and one for the future items.
For the past model, the standardized factor loadings ranged
from .30 to .81. The model fit was not adequate [CFI = .93,
TLI = .91, RMSEA = .067, 90% CI (.014, .11); χ
2
(34) = 49.5,
p= .042]. Furthermore, Factor 1 showed questionable reli-
ability (Cronbach’sα= .69, McDonald’sω= .70). Factor
2 demonstrated good reliability (Cronbach’sα= .83,
McDonald’sω= 83). Modification indices suggested that two
items could be contributing to the poor fits (MI = 4.07 and
7.34), thus we removed them from the survey. For the future
model, the standardized factor loadings ranged from .47 to
.90 and also had an inadequate model fit [CFI = .85, TLI =
.82, RMSEA = .12, 90% CI (.10, .15); χ
2
(64) = 161,
p< .001]. Despite the poor fit, both Factor 1 (Cronbach’s
α= .87, McDonald’sω= .88) and Factor 2 (Cronbach’s
α= .87, a McDonald’sω= .87) demonstrated good reliability.
Nevertheless, modification indices indicated that several items
could be removed to improve the model fit. The standardized
loadings for these initial CFAs can be found in Supplementary
Tables S2 and S3.
Because of the unsatisfactory model fits, a new sample of
103 participants was given the further reduced survey items.
For the past model, the standardized factor loadings ranged
from .47 to .89. The model fit was good [CFI = .96, TLI = .91,
RMSEA = .059, 90% CI (.00, .10); χ
2
(26) = 35.4, p= .10].
Factor 1 showed acceptable reliability (Cronbach’sα= .76,
McDonald’sω= .77) and Factor 2 had acceptable to good
reliability (Cronbach’sα= .78, McDonald’sω= .80). For the
future model, the standardized factor loadings ranged from
.56 to .88 and had an adequate model fit [CFI = .91, TLI = .87,
RMSEA = .10, 90% CI (.06, .14); χ
2
(26) = 54, p= .001].
Factor 1 (Cronbach’sα= .79, McDonald’sω= .79) and
Factor 2 (Cronbach’sα= .85, McDonald’sω= .85) indicated
acceptable to good reliability. Tables 1 and 2show the
standardized loadings for this final CFA.
All factors were coded so that higher scores represented a
brighter past or a brighter future. The final scales are referred
to as the Bright or Bleak Scales (BOBS), and the past scale is
referred to as the Bright or Bleak Scale Past (BOBS-P) while
the future scale is referred to as the Bright or Bleak Scale
Future (BOBS-F). We collapsed subsequent correlations
across the two confirmatory analyses for simplicity as initial
inspections showed no qualitative differences between the
correlations in the two samples individually. The final items
in the two past factors were correlated with one another,
r(205) = .37, p< .001 as were the two future factors, r(205) =
.33, p< .001. Past Factor 1 (“Past Outlooks on Society”)
measured outlooks on society in the past compared to today and
was correlated with the first (“Future Outlooks on Society”)and
second (“Personal Outlooks on the Future”)futurefactors,
r(205) = .62, p<.001andr(205) = .23, p< .001, re-
spectively. Past Factor 2 (“Personal Outlooks on the Past”)was
correlated with the first and second future factors, r(205) = .20,
p= .004 and r(205) = .34, p< .001, respectively.
Test–Retest Reliability
A random subset of participants from the first exploratory
sample was asked to retake the reduced survey along with
additional validation measures with a retest interval of
about 1 month. Past Outlooks on Society showed ac-
ceptable reliability (Cronbach’sα=.77,McDonald’sω=
.78). Personal Outlooks on the Past indicated questionable
reliability (Cronbach’sα= .67, McDonald’sω=.67).
Future Outlooks on Society indicated good reliability
(Cronbach’sα=.82,McDonald’sω= .82). Personal
Outlooks on the Future showed acceptable reliability
(Cronbach’sα= .72, McDonald’sω=.72).
Tests of Construct Validity
A summary of significant Pearson’s correlations for all tests
of validity can be found in Table 3. Personal Outlooks on the
Past and Future were significantly related to depressive
symptoms, r(205) = .28, p< .001 and r(205) = .24, p<
.001, respectively, and neuroticism, r(205) = .33, p< .001
and r(205) = .24, p< .001, respectively. Older age was
associated with brighter Past Societal and Personal Outlooks,
r(205) = .28, p< .001 and r(205) = .42, p< .001, respectively.
Older age was not associated with the future scales at our set
Silaj et al. 5

threshold (Future Societal Outlooks, p= .011; Future Per-
sonal Outlooks, p=.97). Additionally, a brighter Past So-
cietal Outlook was associated with a shorter future time
perspective, r(205) = .24, p< .001, but brighter Future
Societal and Personal Outlooks was associated with a longer
future time perspective, r(205) = .24, p<.001andr(205) = .32,
p< .001, respectively. No relationship was found between
future time perspective and Past Personal Outlooks (p=.36).
Brighter Past Societal and Personal Outlooks were asso-
ciated with lower likelihoods of accepting one’s past, r(205) =
.34, p< .001 and r(205) = .47, p< .001, respectively.
Although weaker effects were found for the future, higher
likelihoods of accepting one’s past was associated with
brighter Future Societal Outlooks, r(205) = .29, p< .001, and
bleaker Future Personal Outlooks, r(205) = .22, p= .002.
Accounting for depressive symptoms and neuroticism re-
duced the latter relationship, r(203) = .15, p= .034. Lastly,
no relationships between both scales and LOT-R reached our
threshold of significance (ps > .01).
Tests of Predictive Validity
Here, older subjective age was associated with brighter Past
Societal and Personal Outlooks, r(205) = .29, p< .001 and
r(205) = .39, p< .001, respectively. Older subjective age
was also associated with bleaker Future Societal Outlooks,
r(205) = .25, p< .001 (Future Personal Outlooks, p= .51).
We found that bleaker Past and Future Personal Outlooks
were associated with better-expected aging outcomes for
mental health only, r(205) = .25, p< .001 and r(205) = .27, p
< .001, respectively. Accounting for depressive symptoms
and neuroticism reduced these effects, r(203) = .13, p=.076
and r(203) = .18, p= .013, and expectations regarding
physical, cognitive, and total health did not relate to Past and
Future Societal or Personal Outlooks at our threshold of
significance (ps > .008). Current satisfaction with life was
associated with bleaker Past Societal Outlooks, r(205) =
.23, p< .001, but brighter Future Societal Outlooks, r(205)
= .23, p= .001. Past and Future Personal Outlooks were not
associated with life satisfaction (ps > .22). None of the scales
were associated with the LIBRA index (ps > .02). Lastly,
greater current financial strain was associated with bleaker
Past and Future Personal Outlooks, r(205) = .28, p<.001
and r(205) = .31, p< .001, respectively. No significant
results were found for the other scales (ps > .33).
Past and Future Outlooks During COVID-19
The COVID-19 pandemic offered a unique opportunity to test
the BOBS given the varied challenges that adults across the
Table 3. Summary of Significant Validity Pearson’s Correlations.
Correlation Tests of Construct Validity df r p
Personal outlooks on the past, depressive symptoms 205 .28 <.001
Personal outlooks on the future, depressive symptoms 205 .24 <.001
Personal outlooks on the past, neuroticism 205 .33 <.001
Personal outlooks on the future, neuroticism 205 .24 <.001
Older age, brighter past outlooks on society 205 .28 <.001
Older age, brighter personal outlooks on the past 205 .42 <.001
Brighter past outlooks on society, shorter future time perspective 205 .24 <.001
Brighter future outlooks on society, longer future time perspective 205 .24 <.001
Personal outlooks on the future, longer future time perspective 205 .32 <.001
Brighter past outlooks on society, lower likelihood of accepting one’s past 205 .34 <.001
Brighter personal outlooks on the past, lower likelihood of accepting one’s past 205 .47 <.001
Higher likelihood of accepting one’s past, brighter future outlooks on society 205 .29 <.001
Higher likelihood of accepting one’s past, bleaker personal outlooks on the future 205 .22 .002
Correlation Tests of Predictive Validity df r p
Older subjective age, brighter past outlooks on society 205 .29 <.001
Older subjective age, brighter personal outlooks on the past 205 .39 <.001
Older subjective age, bleaker future outlooks on society 205 .25 <.001
Bleaker personal outlooks on the past, better-expected aging outcomes for mental health 205 .25 <.001
Bleaker personal outlooks on the future, better expected aging outcomes for mental health 205 .27 <.001
Current satisfaction with life, bleaker past outlooks on society 205 .23 <.001
Current satisfaction with life, brighter future outlooks on society 205 .23 .001
Greater current financial strain, bleaker personal outlooks on the past 205 .28 <.001
Greater current financial strain, bleaker personal outlooks on the future 205 .31 <.001
Notes: Due to the many correlations conducted, significant correlations were identified using an alpha threshold of .005 (see Benjamin et al., 2018).
6Gerontology & Geriatric Medicine

lifespan have faced throughout the past year. People who
believed they were more likely to have already contracted the
virus had bleaker Past Societal and Personal Outlooks,
r(205) = .20, p=.005andr(205) = .37, p< .001, re-
spectively. No relationships were found for the future scales
that met our significance threshold (ps > .006). People who
believed they were likely to contract the virus in the next
6 months had bleaker Past and Future Personal Outlooks
r(205) = .24, p<.001andr(205) = .29, p< .001, re-
spectively. Accounting for depressive symptoms and neurot-
icism reduced the former relationship, r(203) = .18, p=.010.
No relationships were found for the other scales (ps >.03).
Finally, people that were more worried that their friends and
family would contract the virus had bleaker Future Societal
Outlooks, r(205) = .20, p= .004. None of the other scales
reached our significance threshold (ps > .02), and none of the
scales were related to self-reported efficacy of following
quarantining guidelines in their area (ps > .16) or the number of
people they knew that tested positive for the virus (ps > .11).
Discussion
Given that outlooks on the past and future of society are
related to present behavior and may change due to major life
events (e.g., COVID-19) or with age (e.g., earlier or later in
the lifespan), we sought to create and validate an instrument
to assess outlooks on the past and future in relation to the
present. To validate our new measure, we tested it on an adult
lifespan sample. We expected perceptions of the past and
future to vary with age and that our scale would be related to
already existing scales measuring health, well-being, tem-
poral orientation, and experiences related to the pandemic.
Despite creating parallel items for past and future time
perspectives, the best fitting models led to only a small
overlap of items, hinting at a dissociation between the two
temporal perspectives. The final two temporal scales were
only moderately related to one another, providing further
evidence of their unique contributions to understanding
perceptions over time (i.e., a temporal perspective asym-
metry). Within each temporal domain, two factors were
present that represented Past and Future Societal Outlooks
compared to today and Past and Future Personal Outlooks in
general. Past and Future Societal Outlooks were inversely
related to each other, such that brighter Past Societal Outlooks
were associated with bleaker Future Societal Outlooks. On the
other hand, Past and Future Personal Outlooks were positively
related to each other such that brighter Past Personal Outlooks
for oneself, friends and family, and humankind were related to
brighter Future Personal Outlooks for those same groups. Test–
retest analyses indicated acceptable reliability across most
scales even amidst changing and uncertain times.
Past perceptions were more aligned with validating
questionnaires associated with the past (e.g., ACPAST) and
future perceptions were more aligned with questionnaires
relating to the future (e.g., FTPS); although some overlap was
observed. For example, brighter Past and Future Personal
Outlooks were both related to a lower likelihood of accepting
one’s past and expectations to contract COVID-19 in the next
6 months. Furthermore, even though ratings on Past and
Future Personal Outlooks scales were influenced by de-
pressive symptoms and neuroticism, most of the relationships
with other competing scales suggest that these factors were
not a large influence on each scale. Other personality factors,
such as openness, introversion, and extraversion, were not
assessed here, though they may potentially relate to outlooks
of the past and future and might be considered in future work.
Perceptions of the past and future did differ with chro-
nological age and future time perspective as would be ex-
pected by SST. Older adults perceived the past as brighter
than the present while younger adults perceived the future as
brighter than the present. Shorter future time perspectives were
associated with brighter perceptions of the past whereas longer
future time perspectives were associated with brighter percep-
tions of the future. These relationships are consistent with the
idea that older adults often have more limited future time ex-
pansion (Carstensen, 2006). In contrast, younger adults likely
expect their future time to be more abundant and may remain
optimistic about the future, perhaps as a method of coping.
In addition to chronological age, we found that subjective
age was also related to past and future outlooks. Older
subjective age has been more strongly related to health than
actual age, suggesting an important link of this scale to health
(Spuling et al., 2013). On the other hand, both age differences
highlight the nature of the scale in relation to the temporal
projection they were asked to take. Having participants
project themselves 40 years into the past might engender
outlooks based on a historical perspective rather than one
based on lived experiences. Alternatively, if participants do
not expect to be living 40 years from now, they may feel
detached or less invested in such outlooks, which might affect
their responses. Future work might examine age boundary
conditions regarding the temporal framing of the BOBS.
Additionally, some items (e.g., those related to child-rearing)
may prompt different responses at an individual level de-
pendent on one’s role in their family system (e.g., parent and
grandparent) or experiences living abroad or with immi-
gration. Thus, one’s identity or personal experiences may
influence how they respond to such items, and future work
might consider these factors when using BOBS to assess
societal and personal outlooks of the past and future.
Interestingly, the new scales were not simply a new way to
measure one’s hope or optimism in life as measured by other
popular scales like the LOT-R. Although we expected that
one’s optimism or pessimism would influence one’s per-
ceptions of the past and future, the distinctness of these new
scales suggests that they may measure novel aspects of
optimism compared with the LOT-R. One reason for these
differences might have to do with the types of questions
assessed by each measure. The LOT-R assesses trait-like
factors (e.g., easy to relax and does not get upset easily)
Silaj et al. 7

and has a personal orientation [e.g., optimistic about my
future, expectations going my way, and good things hap-
pening to me (emphases added)]. In contrast, our new scales
do not have questions assessing trait-like factors and many
of the items assess beliefs about how different groups of
people fare, thereby speaking more toward beliefs about
society and communities. The one exception is that the
Personal Outlook factor is more specifictoone’s family and
oneself but also is much more general than the questions on
the LOT-R.
Finally, BOBS was related to attitudes toward COVID-19
such that participants who believed they were more likely to
have already contracted the virus had bleaker Past Societal and
Personal Outlooks, suggesting that one’s health and experience
during the pandemic may impact their perceptions of society’s
and their own personal past. People who believed they were
more likely to contract the virus in the next 6 months had
bleaker Past and Future Personal Outlooks. Interestingly,
participants who were more worried that their loved ones
would contract the virus had bleaker Future Societal Outlooks,
suggesting that worrying about the health of one’s loved ones
may impact outlooks on the future of society.
The relationship between Past Personal Outlooks and
predicted likelihood of contracting COVID-19 in the next
6 months was reduced after accounting for depressive
symptoms and neuroticism. The most parsimonious expla-
nation for this reduction is that such past and future per-
spectives were influenced by the negative outlooks on life that
commonly accompany those factors. However, depression
might have caused poor outlooks on life that impacted beliefs
about the pandemic. Alternatively, events during the pan-
demic might have caused poor outlooks on life, which in turn
increased depressive symptoms. On the other hand, those
more likely to be impacted by COVID-19 may have other
reasons to have negative outlooks on their personal pasts and
futures, such as being part of a historically oppressed group.
In the present study, we took a first step at understanding the
influences of depressive symptoms and neuroticism by re-
porting results with and without considering their influences
collectively. The reduction in some of the effect sizes sug-
gests that they might be critical causal, mediating, or con-
sequential constructs. Causal conclusions may be better
informed by a longitudinal design; therefore, repeated
measures data are needed to gain insight into the relationship
between depression and the BOBS Personal Outlooks Factor.
Additional understanding of these factors, and the BOBS
more generally, is needed when the pandemic is no longer
looming over us.
In the present study, we validated the BOBS in participants
from the United States who were highly diverse across age,
class, and ethnoracial group. Though we did not collect in-
formation regarding participants’cultural practices and be-
liefs, future research might investigate how distinct cultural
practices, religious beliefs, and traditions may impact one’s
perceptions of the past and future. Future research also might
investigate the constructs presented here in non-WEIRD
(Western, educated, industrialized, rich, and democratic)
societies, where cultural values largely deviate from those of
the WEIRD societies and may represent differences in re-
sponses to the questions distributed across the technological
and social categories (e.g., products, technology, health, social,
and family) used within our scale. Although gaining a more
comprehensive understanding of perceptions of the past and
future across other nations and cultures was outside the scope of
the present study, we encourage future research to extend these
findings in other geographical and cultural contexts.
Conclusion
In conclusion, we developed and validated a reliable com-
prehensive instrument that measures one’s Past and Future
Societal and Personal Outlooks. The present instrument
might serve as a new window into one’s current mental state
that represents an evaluation of the past society as compared
to today, and predictions for future society compared to today.
Given the emphasis on society, the scale might also be used in
larger aggregates to take a “pulse”on how communities at
different levels are faring. BOBS also captures personal
outlooks on the past and future for humankind, with bleaker
perspectives associated with depressive symptoms and
neuroticism that may be related to a negative overgenerali-
zation to the self (Carver & Ganellen, 1983;Van der Gucht
et al., 2014). BOBS may illuminate a new dimension of life
satisfaction or personal well-being related to one’s status and
experiences within their community or society in a broader
context, though repeated measures data over longer periods of
time are needed to evaluate clinical implications of this in-
strument. Overall, we have shown that the BOBS is not only
moderately related to other similar measures and differs
across the adult lifespan but also holds unique predictive
value.
Acknowledgments
We thank the students and postdocs affiliated with the MAC
2
Re-
search Laboratory for their suggestions on early versions of the
Bright or Bleak Scale. We also thank Mary Whatley and Dillon
Murphy for helpful comments on the manuscript.
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) received no financial support for the research, au-
thorship, and/or publication of this article.
Supplemental Material
Supplemental material for this article is available online.
8Gerontology & Geriatric Medicine

ORCID iDs
Katie M. Silaj https://orcid.org/0000-0002-5561-9017
Shawn T. Schwartz https://orcid.org/0000-0001-6444-8451
Alan D. Castel https://orcid.org/0000-0003-1965-8227
Ian M. McDonough https://orcid.org/0000-0003-0907-8931
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