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People hold different perspectives about how the world changes. Examples can be seen in everyday truisms such as “You can’t stop progress” or “The more things change, the more they stay the same”. These general worldviews about change may act as a “lens” people use to help them decide whether to support or oppose social change in specific contexts. Over the past decade me and my colleagues have identified five general change worldviews and have been developing and refining their measurement. These five change worldviews are Progress, Golden Age, Endless Cycle, Maintenance, and Balance. In this talk I will describe these worldviews and their measurement, and give examples of their applications to a range of topics spanning sustainability, technological innovation, and politics. In mapping out these relationships I will identify how different change worldviews appear to vary in importance across contexts, with Balance most critical for understanding support for sustainability, Progress/Golden Age important for understanding responses to innovations, and Golden Age uniquely important for preferring Trump/Republicans in the 2016 US election. These relationships were independent of prominent individual differences (e.g., values, political orientation for elections) or context-specific factors (e.g., self-reported innovativeness for responses to innovations). These findings indicate that our beliefs about the future may not just be about the destination we want to get to, but also about the path we think we’re on.

Over the last two decades, there has been a huge increase in scientific publications on climate change. The scientific literature indicates that environmental collapse is inevitable unless serious measures are taken. Psychological research on climate change has shifted its focus primarily toward the way climate change influences psychological well-being. This exclusive focus on the consequences of climate change is misleading because there is an urgent need to address causes of climate change. The leading institutional user of fossil fuel and the single largest producer of greenhouse gases is a military force. The common argument in psychology that individuals must think differently about climate change also applies to psychologists themselves: Psychologists must start considering the impact of militarism on climate change and abandon their reluctance to address military pollution, environmental destruction, and the environmental impact of nuclear weapons. This reluctance is linked with the long-standing militarism within mainstream psychology. Psychologists cannot continue ignore or ally with militarism while militarism produces two global threats: A total nuclear war and environmental collapse. Psychologists can find a more meaningful role in any society focusing on peace, justice and human rights, rather than militarism and national security. In the context of the environment, psychologists must choose to defend the planet, which is home to all. In the context of climate change, psychologists can chart a meaningful course of action only if they focus on environmental justice.