Psychological Aspects of Scenarios

Abstract

A major step in the evaluation of technologies, and policies concerning technologies, is often the development of scenarios describing possible futures under various conditions. The notion of scenario was introduced for military planning by Herman Kahn while at RAND Corporation in the 1950s. Since then, the scenario method has been applied in many areas of long-range policymaking. Typical examples are scenarios for U.S. agricultural policy (1), environmental policy (2), world energy supply strategy (3), helium storage policy (4), climate change (5), or aviation communications technology (6). A recent example are the four scenarios for energy policy in West Germany, developed by a Temporary Committee of the German Parliament. These scenarios describe alternative energy policy options for the next 50 years and represent a wide range of expectations, assumptions, goals, and values with respect to, for instance, population growth, lifestyle changes, economic growth, change of economic structure, and availability of energy resources and technologies for their transformation (7).