Lay people expect social modernization will bring more societal well-being: the relation between expected societal development, communion, agency and subjective well-being

Previous studies showed that lay people see modernization as a threat to social fabric because it will make people less warm and moral. The purpose of this paper is to describe lay people’s understanding of the effects of different types of modernization. Specifically, we checked how social, economic, technological and conventional development are expected to influence communion, agency and well-being in the future society.

We conducted three cross-sectional studies using online surveys. Prolific participant pool users over 18 years of age that held Canadian citizenship and resided in Canada were eligible to take part in the study in exchange for financial compensation. T-tests and linear regression analyses were conducted using SPSS statistical package.

Participants expected that people in future society will have lower well-being than today. Technological modernization was expected to decrease communion and well-being but increase agency in the future, while social modernization was expected to strengthen societal communion, agency and well-being.

Lay people believe that different types of modernization will have different effects on society. Whereas technological progress is viewed ambivalently, social development is seen as uniformly positive for well-being of society. In order to counter pessimism about the future, policy makers should focus on social development while striving to mitigate negative social aspects of technological advancements.