According to construal level theory, consumers tend to think about their future abstractly, making it unclear and inexact. Here, a new approach is developed to help people enhance their future‐oriented outcomes by priming them to think about their future concretely. Two experiments show that priming a concrete mindset about the future leads to enhanced future‐oriented outcomes. Specifically, the studies show that participants discounted current funds in favor of future gains less when they were primed with a concrete mindset. Opportunity cost consideration is shown to be the mechanism driving this effect. Though research suggests that most consumers do not consider opportunity costs unless they are explicitly presented to them, priming a concrete mindset increases consideration of opportunity costs so that consumers can make better current decisions that will enhance their future‐oriented outcomes. This research helps to better understand why thinking concretely about the future is beneficial to future‐oriented outcomes.

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夯实基础：具体思考未来的效果

根据建构主义水平的理论，消费者倾向于抽象地思考他们的未来，使其变得不清楚和不精确。在这里，开发了一种新方法来帮助人们通过激发他们对未来的具体思考来增强他们面向未来的成果。两项实验表明，树立关于未来的具体心态会增强面向未来的结果。具体来说，研究表明，当参与者以具体的心态开始时，他们会折现当前的资金以减少未来的收益。机会成本的考虑是驱动这种效应的机制。尽管研究表明，除非有明确的提示，否则大多数消费者不会考虑机会成本，灌输一种具体的心态会增加对机会成本的考虑，以便消费者可以做出更好的当前决策，从而增强其面向未来的结果。这项研究有助于更好地理解为什么对未来进行具体思考会有利于面向未来的结果。