Abstract: Future orientation refers to the orientation that individual’s thinking and behavior prefers to, meanwhile, it is also a process that individual thinks and plans about the future. There are three points of view about the psychological structure of Future orientation: the element perspective, the process perspective and the motivation-cognition-behavior perspective. The main methods to measure the future orientation include questionnaire method, projection method, circle test, tell me a story and story completion technique. Future orientation are mainly influenced by age, sex, personality and emotion . Future orientation also plays an active role in healthy behavior, substance abuse and academic achievement. At last, the future research should focus on the clarification of the future orientation functional mechanism, the improvement of the measurement tools, employing the sophisticated experimental design and investigating the brain mechanism of the future orientation.

Key words: future orientation, future time perspective, time orientation