Last month, our founder Anna Sircova presented the Futurization Framework at the Behavioural Insights for Policy Conference (BiP) 2026 in Athens, Greece — an interdisciplinary workshop organised by King’s College London, Ethos Lab, and Eteron Institute, bringing together behavioural scientists, economists, policymakers, and practitioners from across Europe.
The conference brought into focus themes that sit at the heart of our work: trust, education, public engagement, and how we can support and empower people to act even in the face of uncertainty.
A range of important research was shared, including keynote speaker Ralph Hertwig making the case for boosting — building real cognitive and emotional capacities in people, not just steering their choices — and Nicolas Fieulaine exploring how psychological and cultural perspectives shed insight on why people might not access their social rights. The shared thread: education and culture aren’t soft additions to policy — they’re essential.
BiP gave us the room to go deeper into our research results — and what came up in those conversations made us want to share three things from our own data we haven’t spoken about yet.
Culture shapes how the future is imagined and felt. Across our scenario workshops with student focus groups from the US, China, India, Turkey, and France, we found strikingly different responses to the same question: what would it mean if the future didn’t exist? In the US, no future meant collapse — no motivation, no meaning. In China the response was calm and adaptive — no future, no problem. Habits, beliefs, and cultural context are part of the architecture of how people relate to what comes next.
Climate anxiety colors an experience — but selectively. In our installation study at Terres du Son, baseline climate anxiety was associated with lower excitement and sense of personal control, and more fear about the future — but didn’t touch deeper traits like calm acceptance or sense of purpose. Future-focused experiences need to hold space for emotional complexity and help people access the existing foundations for resilience, not just inspire.
The strongest effect we observed was social. More than any shift in individual climate attitudes, what the installation changed was how connected people felt to each other through the act of imagining the future together. That, to us, is what futurization looks like in practice. It is a psychological skill: the ability to sit with dark or uncertain futures without paralysis. Building that capacity — through education, thoughtful design, and honest public communication — is at the centre of building hope, resilience and action.
We thank Fondation APRIL for their support of the research.
And thank you to Sanchayan Banerjee, Pinelopi Skotida, Vasilis Panagou, George Melios, and the whole organising team for creating this space of opportunity in Athens.
