Optimism as a source of renewable energy in the transition towards a fossil-free society

Project leaders Nicole Geschwind and Marjolein Hanssen from the Faculty of Psychology and Neuroscience received a contribution from the SUM2030 Seed Funds to collaborate with other members of the University in an exciting project aimed at envisioning and building a fossil-free society where everyone can thrive! They use the power of optimism, positive psychology and Artificial Intelligence to make people’s future worlds more concrete and are currently piloting with techniques to make the experience more immersive and adaptable. 

The goal of our project is to let people create a concrete vision of a worthwhile, attractive future world. A world to that one wants to contribute. To this end, we use positive psychology exercises that invite people to imagine a beautiful, sustainable world in which we, all together, have managed to deal with the climate crisis successfully. What does this world look like for you, what are the elements in it? How have we managed to get there? How do you behave in this worthwhile future world, and what have you done to make it possible? We use Artificial Intelligence to make people’s worthwhile future worlds more concrete and are currently piloting with techniques to make the experience more immersive and adaptable.

Project leaders Nicole Geschwind and Marjolein Hanssen from the Faculty of Psychology and Neuroscience received a contribution from the SUM2030 Seed Funds to collaborate on this project with Mark Sanders and Job Zomerplaag from the School of Business and Ecomomics, Ahmed Hussain, and Gijs Wijngaard from the Faculty of Science and Engineering. Meanwhile, we have managed to obtain funding to integrate the project into the Psychology Bachelor (Comenius, Geschwind and Hanssen) and to do research on the “Best Possible Self” exercise, one of the core positive psychology exercises underlying the project (NWO-XS, Hanssen). In addition, we received a prize for pitching the project at the prestigious UM gala dinner (funded by SWOL).

FPN in the future?

Meanwhile it is nice to see that small things are happening that take us a step closer to that future. For example, the roof of UNS40 has recently received a new Green Roof that we can now admire from our offices:

Green roof of the UNS 40