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Current Opinion in Psychology

Date: April 2019<br>Pages: 72-75<br>Volume: Volume 26

Published by: Elsevier<br>Published by

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The self over time

Author links open overlay panelHal E Hershfield

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10.1016/j.copsyc.2018.06.004

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Article preview<br>Abstract<br>Section snippets<br>References (31)

Highlights<br>•People often have difficulty with long-term decision-making.

•Recent research suggests that in many ways the future self can occasionally be thought of as another person.

•How this other person is regarded (as a disconnected stranger vs. a close other) can impact decisions across domains.

•Interventions modify the link between current and future selves or downplay the sacrifices the current self needs to make people often have difficulty with long-term decision-making.

People often have difficulty making decisions that maximize well-being over time, and researchers have explored various reasons for why such poor `intertemporal’ decision-making may arise. In this article, I review a body of work that has focused on how the relationship between current and future selves may influence judgments and decisions. Namely, I spotlight research suggesting that the future self is often thought of as another person and how feelings about this `other’ person impact decisions across domains. I then review two insights gleaned from this research: in order to positively modify long-term decision-making, interventions may wish to focus on (1) strengthening the felt bond between current and future selves, or (2) reducing the subjective pain of sacrifices made by the current self. I close with several questions future research may wish to address.

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Section snippets<br>Thinking of the future self as an other<br>Philosophers are fond of posing the Ship of Theseus riddle: if a ship leaves Los Angeles and travels around the world, but during its journey, gradually replaces all of its parts, is it the `same’ ship when it returns to port? In a similar way, theorists have asked whether people tend to think of themselves as remaining the same or different over time. In the modern era, Parfit [6] has been most influential in suggesting that the sense of `connection’ that individuals feel to distant, future

How conceptions of the future self-affect decision-making<br>Several recent papers provide support for the idea that the way the future self is considered can influence the decisions that people make: on both correlational and causal levels, people who feel more connected to their future selves have accumulated more assets [15], are more patient on financial saving tasks in laboratory settings [15,16], opt for more ethical (rather than unethical) courses of action [17, 18, 19], procrastinate less [20], and exercise more [21••]. In short, feeling a

Possible interventions and future directions<br>These findings point to two important insights in the ongoing quest to help people make more patient long-term decisions. First, it may be helpful to strengthen the relationship that exists between one’s current and future selves. How might this be accomplished? Given that the future self can be considered at least analogous to another person, we can consider the various ways that previous research has successfully encouraged people to take better care of others. In the charity domain, for

Conflict of interest statement<br>Nothing declared.

References and recommended reading<br>Papers of particular interest, published within the period of review, have been highlighted as:•• of outstanding interest

Acknowledgements<br>The author is grateful to Kate Christensen, Adam Greenberg, Elicia John, Cassie Mogilner Holmes, and Joseph Reiff for helpful discussions surrounding the content of this article, and Lindsey Yuan for research assistance.

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