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Errors in not fully appreciating how my future self interests may be different from the ones I have right now, and that's another version of really being mean to our future selves, or at least not that kind.
What an amazing concept. Hello, and welcome to the Psychology Podcast. Today we welcome how Hirshfield to the podcast. How is a professor of marketing, behavioral decision making, and psychology at UCLA's Anderson School of Management. The recipient of numerous teaching awards, how is named one of the most forty outstanding B school props under forty in the world by business education
website Poets and Quants. He publishes a top academic journals and also contributes op eds to The New York Times, Harvard Business Review, The Wall Street Journal, and other outlets. His latest book is called Your Future Self, How to Make Tomorrow Better Today. In this episode, I talked to Hal Hirschfield about meeting your future self. Decisions are trade offs between the present and the future. Oftentimes it's easier to choose what feels gratifying now than to choose what's
more beneficial in the years to come. How believes this is because we feel disconnected to our futureselves. How shows us the mental mistakes we commit when thinking about the future. He shares with us how to visualize who we want to become so we can make choices that are better for us now and later. In this episode, we will truly help you meet your future self and feel a great connection to it. This is a really great conversation.
I really really respect How and his research. He has a lot of scientific integrity, and I also like how he is very interested in applying it to help all people reach their full potential for their ADO. I bring you hal Hirshfield hol so great to have you on the Psychology Podcast.
Hey, thank you, Scott. I'm so happy to be here.
I'm so happy for you to be here. Such an awesome topic we're going to talk about today, something it's been near and dear to my heart as well as yours on the future self. But before we jump into the topic of discussion to day, can you tell people a little bit about what you do at UCLA's Anderson School of Management and what sort of background you have because I feel like you've a psychology background.
Yeah, that's right. So I am a professor of marketing,
behavioral decision making, and psychology. Basically, what that means my background psychology, but I teach in the business school, and so for all intents and purposes, what that means is, I'm really interested in the psychological underpinnings of decision making and understanding sort of why consumers do the things that they do, why people do the things that they do, and then how we can help them do more of what they say that they want to do from a psychological lens.
Did you like when you went to grad school? Did you were you thinking, oh, I'm definitely going to be a professor in a school of management or were you thinking it could go any direction?
Yeah? I wish I could tell you I had this very elaborate, you know, planned out path, But I mean, honestly, it was a series of fratuitous events. I was on the train and at the time my girlfriend now my wife, had gotten an interview at Northwestern for grad school, and I ran into one of my professors. I said, I don't know what to do, and he said, you should apply to this post doc there it's in a business school. It's for people who do the type of research you do.
I hadn't even thought about it, and like I often think, had I not run into whom would, I'd not have known about this. And I did this sort of extra training that put me into the business school world, specifically for people with psych backgrounds. I really loved it because it let me do the research I want to do, but then also talk to like quote unquote real people out there.
Awesome. Yeah, I think a lot of people who get psychology PhDs don't realize they could make a lot more money applying to business schools for jobs.
It's even like make a difference, Scott.
Whatever. Even adjuncting, even adjuncting for a business school is ten times the salary from AUNT. I mean, you know, no, I just think I think people in academia are really exploited. So this is just a pet peeve of mine.
Yeah, I'm I know. I'm with you though.
Okay, so let's talk about your future self. What got you thinking about this line of work in the first place.
So to some extent, you know, it's like another one of these kind of happy accidents. It was like I was in grad school It was around the time of the financial crisis, and I had been sitting now with my graduate mentor, and not to make this too academic, it's really not. She said this funny thing to me. She was like, you know, gosh, there's all these people who are in this like dire straits when it comes
to a retirement. You know, economists always talk about this, but psychologists have nothing to say, and like, I think you should do something about retirement. And I was like, that sounds incredibly boring, and she said, you know, that's kind of the problem that someone your age thinks that.
You know.
I started to think more and more about it, and it was like, okay, retirement decision making, long term decision making, it all involves this trade off between the things I want right now and the things I want later. And economists had always thought about that in terms of how
do people make trade offs between these rewards. But I started thinking about it more deeply and looking at the philosophy, and it turns out, if you want to know how people make trade offs between rewards now and later, it may make sense to try to figure out how people think about themselves now and later. Really got me into this mindset of understanding how do I even think about the future self and what that means? So that was kind of the the impetus there.
Don't you also have a personal story about the time that your wife and you found out you were going to be parents? Yeah? Okay, so you want to tell that story too?
Yeah? Why why don't I do that one? Okay? So all right, so you asked me how I got into this, So.
You gave me the nerdy answer.
Yeah, I give you a nerd let me give you let me give you the let me give you the fun Well, I'll give you the funny answer. Okay. So all right. So several years ago I got invited to this conference in Iceland, of all places, and it's like, really not all that often that I get to go to a place as cool as that for conference, you know, So of course I say yes, And it worked out really well with my wife's schedule. We just had to go together. She was gonna be kind of like doing
her own thing while I was there. And it was, by the way, it was that the Blue Lagoon spot, and so it's this very funny thing where there's like all these people walking around, like the hotel spa guess, and I'm in this like conference room and I'm feeling a little bored because, you know, I'm thinking I'd rather be outside. And the first speaker gets up, La Paul.
She's a philosophy professor at YEAE. She gets up there and she's super cool and she goes, imagine that you had a one time only opportunity to become a vampire. And I'm like, oh my god, what a weird way to start a talk. And she goes on. She's like, look, you know, all your friends are telling you it's great,
that you'll love it. It's this amazing thing. But there's there's one catch, which is that once you become a vampire, you can't undo that decision, Like you'll always be a vampire and you can't really know what it's like until
you do it. And I'm sitting there and I start having this kind of anxiety spiral because like, three days before, my wife and I found out that she was pregnant with our first kid, and I'm I'm sitting there and I'm hearing this thing about vampires and I'm like, oh my gosh, this is this is just like becoming a parent. My friends are becoming parents. They're telling me you should become a parent too, but you won't know what it's
like until you until you actually do it. And like, as I'm having this anxiety that like Paul stops and she's like, of course, this is just an analogy to becoming a parent. But what was really interesting about this to me was that it highlighted how we can never really know our future selves. That once we go through changes in our lives, those changes will change who we
are in ways that we can't anticipate. And it got me deeply fascinated in this idea of who are we going to become, how do we relate to that person? And what do those relationships mean for the decisions that we make every day.
These are such important questions. I feel like some people like their individual differences in the extent to which people are in connection with their future self or in connection with who you know, with some idea of who the I want to be And I don't know, I'm always amazed at like prodigies are, like people who really really young are like I want to do X. I mean, I don't mean to focus on myself, but like when I was asked in like fourth grade what I want to be when I grew up? I said, I want
to be a PhD academic psychologist. So I feel like I was in connection with my future self for a long time.
Well, Scott, you know what's funny is that that's when I when I was asked the same question, my answer was the opposite because my parents are both psychologists, and I said, I don't want to be a psychologist. That the one thing I know I know.
What to do. But of course that is super funny. I was trying to imagine what the exact opposite of a PhD academic psychologist not want a clown. Well, yeah, so there are seems to be individual differences, and like what explains those individual differences? You know, like it does seem like some people live for the moment all the time. I guess they discounting is relevant here as well, this discussion.
Yeah, absolutely so, I mean, to some extent, we all choose now over later in various ways. Right, But you're right that overall I think there are individual differences here. I mean a lot of what my research has been uncovering is how do different people relate to their future selves?
And how are some people more connected and other people are less connected, and how those sense of connections can really impact you know, your likelihood to save or eat healthier exercises, you know, and so on and so on. But you know, the question of where these come from is a really deep question and it's one we're still exploring.
You know. Of course, age is one sort of situational factor, right, So the older I get, the more connected I am to my future self because life becomes a little more stable. But even then there are differences. You know, It's not like everybody goes, you know, in lockstep, you know, in sync with each other. If I have a more stable upbringing, then not. You know that that helps explain some of
these differences. But then again, and still there are differences there, and you know, it's it's just kind of an open question to figure out why is it easier for some people to relate to that future self than others? One thing I've really been exploring and suspect maybe part of it is, you know, who are the.
Models that I have? Right?
And am am I likely to see sort of you know, I'll say, like proxies for my future self? Am I so fortunate that I can see older people? In my life that represent the person I want to become or do I not have that? And you know, and this is all speculation, it would be really nice to be able to sort of systematically examine the role that those sorts of people play in our lives.
And really it's that speaks to the importance of you know, for like underserved populations and school interventions showing really inspirational examples of a future what a future self could look like, even though it's not maybe immediately around them where they're growing up. Yes, so important. The topic you study touches on so much, many fundamental existential issues. So an interesting question is like are we the same over time? You know,
like how much do we change? Personality change? You know, these are topics. I'm I'm you know, maybe this is just selfishly I'm interested in, but it seems relevant to the work you're doing.
Yeah, it really is. I've been fascinated by these team questions too. You know. It was funny I I started, you know, asking this exact question, are the we the same over time? And I, you know, the more and more I dug in, I realized that part of the problem here is like how you even asked the questions like what does same mean you know, and and not you know, not to get too sort of in the weeds here, but but it turns out there's no black and white answer. Brent Roberts and Roddicka Damon have done
some fascinating work on these questions. One of the ways that I've come to think about it is that there are many ways that we do change over time. So you know, if you look at the five, you know, the big five core personality traits, in a ten year span, you can expect to change a decent amount on one of those traits, which is kind of wild, right. You could get more conscientious or more open, or less extroverted or whatever. So you look at that, on the one hand,
you say, wow, one of those changes, that's crazy. And then the other way to look at it is four of them sort of stay the same, and you know that that sort of suggests it's it goes both directions. One thing I really like, one way to look at this that I think is so telling is to think about what's called core moral traits. So Nina Stromanger, she's done some really cool work on this, and she suggests that those are the things that we point to as
making us stay quote unquote the same over time. So and when I say core moral traits, I mean like, are you someone who's considered kind or compassionate, or or or sardonic or biting, you know, these sorts of things that we say that that's that's kind of who you are.
And if I see in you that I haven't seen you in ten years or twenty years or whatever it is, but but you're still kind at the heart, or you're still sarcastic at the heart, that I say, Sure, are lots of circumstantial things have changed, but in some ways, at the core, you are the same. You are who you are.
Yeah, And I don't you know how much does big five personality traits really tell us who who you really are? Absolutely, like, there's a lot of people who share the same level of openness as I do. And how does that make me so uniquely? Scott Barry Kaufman. Yeah, what does it mean? What does it mean to be uniquely Scott Berry Kaufman.
Yep, you know, I mean that's I think you asked the question exactly the right way. I'm sure by the way, you know you could do the service. You can ask all sorts of people in your life, and they would probably converge on a set of things, traits that go far beyond openness, right, Yeah, And if those changed, my bet is that people would no longer see you as the same and that you know, your friends may change, your relationships may change too.
Yeah, I think. So, how do I know that the future of me is really me?
You don't, And I think that's confronting in a way. You know, even next week, I suspect I will be me, but I don't know what will happen between now and then, you know. And I find this to be sort of existentially terrifying at times to say, like, you know, I really can't know. I can't know what changes will happen in the world or my friend group or in my family, and I can't know how those changes will change me, but to some extent, and that's probably why we don't
think about these things all the time. To some extent, you know, you still or rather my sort of take on this is that you still you still plan, uh, you still sort of go about doing what you're doing, recognizing that there could be some changes along the way.
Yeah. Yeah, I've been thinking about the relationship between the affect of forecasting literature and the work you do. And you know, we're so bad at knowing how we're going to feel later on if we make certain decisions, and we often also overestimate how much something will hurt, you know, or or even how much we'll enjoy something. Does that get in the way of that over and underestimations of
our emotions for the future. Does that get in the way sometimes of us really moving toward the self we really want to become.
I think it absolutely does, right, I mean, and you can think about different ways that it does, right, So, you know, on a very sort of surface level, right, I could imagine that like certain financial expenses or even time expenditures I think will make me happier in the future than they actually will, you know. And then and I say, why did I spend my time doing that thing? Why did I spend my money on that thing? Like it didn't breed as much happiness as I was expecting
it would, you know. The flip side, as you mentioned, I think is also really important, which is that sometimes we overestimate the duration of the negative, you know. And it's kind of nice in a way, right, Like nothing will be as bad as it seems.
After the fact, nothing will be as good as it seems either.
Nothing will be as good as it seems either, And I think you know, in both directions, it's easy to think how those kind of forecasting errors could prevent us from doing the types of things that come back to sort of our core mission, the core things that we say we want to do, because we're not really fully able to step into the shoes of our future selves and see the world through their eyes and figure out how will this decision impact me later?
Yeah? Is it because our future selves often look like strangers to us?
Yeah, So this is what a lot of the work I've been doing sort of circles around that I'm in some ways. In some ways, these future selves do look like strangers. I mean, we've looked at this variety of levels. You know. One of my old studies does this on a neuroimaging level, where in the brain the future self looks more like the way another person looks. What's interesting about this to me is that it's it's not always the case that my future self is going to be
perceived as a stranger. It might be perceived as another person. But the type of other person, I think is what what ends up really mattering for our decisions.
M yeah, is it the type of other person you want to become, or is the type of other person that you it's feels so alienated from who you currently are that you don't even to feel hope that you'll ever get there or or desire to be come exactly.
And I think I think you know, that sort of motivational element is hugely important there, right, And so if i'm you know, if I'm seeing that future self as if it's another person, but sort of this bleak, bleak other who I don't want to become, you could understand why you wouldn't do things today for their benefit. It's
like almost doesn't make sense. But if they are seen in a more hopeful light, if they're seen as somebody who I want to take care of, you know, the way that we think about our our partners or our aging parents, you know, our kids, our close friends, if we think of them that way, and I think that's really important because it's not like those are people that we want to turn into, but they may be people who we care about and who we want to do things for to make their lives better if that's how
we think of our future selves now, it can become a little bit more understandable that we would we would do things today for their benefit.
Yeah, well, so what are other some of the mental mistakes we make when thinking about the future.
Okay, so one one big mistake is that we get overly anchored on the present, right And so what I mean by that is that we get so sucked into what's happening right now that it's it's not as if we the future suddenly arrives and it's surprising that it's there. It's just that we've put like all of our focus on right now. It's kind of like if you're teaching a classroom and you're you see other people, but you
only look at one student the whole time. It's like it would be understandable if everybody else, you know, lost lost interest. You're not paying attention to them, right So, you know, it's a little the same way. It's like, if we just look at our current self right now and and fail to really consider deeply our future selves, we're going to start getting getting taken in by temptations today.
We're going to start sort of overweighting present rewards and not, you know, sort of making some trade offs which we now and later. You know, psychologists call this present bias. But the basic idea is that we just get sucked into what's happening right now, because of course this is the time period that we're living in.
What about focusing too much on your past as well, like you know, oh, you know, this happened to me when I was three, Therefore I can't move on.
There's some great work on regret and how we deal with it. One of the things I like to think about here is that there is a use case for these sorts of thoughts. Right if I think back to the past and have regrets or I wish something went a different way, One way of dealing with that is a sort of hopeful and productive way by saying I'm going to change the way that I'm living now to prevent that sort of thing from happening, or to go a different course in my life. So, in other words,
I think that's the healthy function that regrets serves. The problem I think that you're speaking to is when we almost overapply that and we get so focused on the past that we're doing it in a way that doesn't allow.
For us to move on, move on.
And incorporate those feelings moving forward.
Yeah, I think that happens a lot, and I think that happens a lot in therapy. Yeah, I don't know how much therapy is future self based versus past self focused. I mean, Martin Seligman and some colleagues have tried to create the field of prospection, and some clinical psychologists have tried to apply it a little bit, you know, but still perspection is lacking in a lot of clinical realms.
Well, I think it, you know, it is, And I think what's really interesting about that work is that perspection isn't one flavor, right, you know. Perspection generally speaking is thinking ahead the future. But there's some really interesting work suggesting you you can you can do that in variety diferent ways. You can simulate and try to like sort of imagine what the future is going to be like.
You can make predictions, you can make intentions, or you can plan, and all of those are forms of thinking ahead. But I think you can quickly see how some are more or could be more productive than others. You know, if I'm if I'm just sort of spinning my wheels and just imagining the bad things that could happen to me because I'm socially anxious and I'm going to a party and I'm worried about saying something dumb that I'm going to regret. That's a form of perspection, but I
don't think it's going to be all that helpful. Is there a world in which I can plan and think about, Okay, what will I do if I'm feeling nervous? What will I what will be something that I say? I mean, even this sounds so silly, but even like you know, planning conversation topics is a form of that's a form of perspection. It's a form of planning. And people say people say, oh, that that's taking away all the organic, authentic aspects away from a conversation with and then again
it makes for good conversations. It makes it better and it reduces some of the anxiety there.
No, I mean, if I didn't do that for my podcast, what the hell would I mean?
A great example, it's a great example.
No, it's a really good point. You know, my my my advisor, one of my advisors in grad school, Throwmall Singers cited positive constructive daydreaming, and it was very I think it was a very important contribution to the psychology literature to say, well, that's daydreaming, and not all forms of daydreaming are bad, you know, like Freud. Freud thought daydreaming was regressive to the to the womb or something,
regression to them. What does it mean really? And I don't get it, but that, uh, it's some daydreaming can be ruminative, ruminative and unproductive. That you made that point clearly, but some can be very positive and constructive.
Yeah, it's absolutely right. And you know it's funny because you think about that, you know, the work that singer Dad and that you're talking about there, and you sort of put that up against the sort of present day you know, mindfulness and being focused on the present, and there gets to be this real sort of tension that I don't even think should exist, right, And because you know that is the constructive daydreaming, the planfulness there, that's a way of allowing you to be present, you know,
moving forward into the future. And you know, I wouldn't begrudge anybody that doing that, and it could be helpful, right, But is it anti present? I don't know.
I don't think so, you know, I don't get me started on that topic, because I've been like I've been like so in terms of the neuroscience, I've been arguing that the mindfulness folks really neglect the value of the default mode brain network, and they focus too much on the executive attention brain network, as though like daydreams must be abolished from the kingdom, abandoned. But the resolution of that paradox is just you can be intensely mindful to your daydreams. It's like, that's it.
Yeah, I think that's exactly right. And I mean I would, I would put a lot of money wagering that, you know, I would probably result in better outcomes.
Yeah, yeah, I mean you can be intensely mindful of the outside world. Yes, you can be tetly mindful of your breath. You can also be intensely mindful of your future goals, your aspirations, your dreams, your future, self, your future.
Yeah, I mean absolutely, and and and not one of these needs to be at the cost of the other. You know. It's like maybe it's literally, you know, maybe literally in that moment you can't do all. But there's no world in which you know, we're saying these have to be you know, mutually exclusive forever, Yeah, forever. Yeah.
I mean there are a lot of moments where I'm so deeply absorbed in my daydreams that I forget that there is a world outside of me. That is true. Yeah, why didn't you answer my phone call? Yeah, my mom or something like that was daydreaming.
That's a good repression. If she's okay with that.
Have you met my mom? I love her? I love her. She's the best. So what are some areas or demeans where we fall short of our long term goals?
There's the classic ones, right, so you know, we we can point to undersaving and you know, overspending or overeating and you know, not doing enough healthy exercise, et cetera. But you know, lately I've become much more interested in time expenditures and the ways that that's another form of sort of present future trade off where if we're not careful, we can end up dissatisfyed with our choices, you know. And so I mean it's easy to point to, Oh,
I meant to save more and I didn't. I meant to not you know, like splurge on dinner this weekend, but then I got wrapped up in the moment. That's of course an example. But I think you know these cases where I I tell myself I want to connect more to my friends, my friends from you know, going way back, or even my friends who I'm friends with now, and I can never find enough time. And then I look and I say, how much time was I just like sitting around on my phone today? How much time did I spend?
You know?
Oh, I got tired at night, I didn't feel like making plans or something like that. Those are those are the same sort of decisions where it's easy to prioritize the temptations right now and not then do the deeper work to get connected to the bigger picture that that probably will result in more satisfaction or happiness later.
On later on, But it's so hard for us to justify later on when right now something might be hedonistic.
Well okay, but then let me let me like add a wrinkle to that. Right the time expenditure is a good one where it's not like me taking time to call my old friend will only benefit me later, It'll also benefit me right now because it's true probably going to be a good time, you know, And why don't I do it?
Oh?
It's going to be awkward to catch up after a while, and I'm gonna have to find thirty minute. I'n'na have to find an hour to catch up. And it's just easier to go on Instagram or something like that, right, And the reality is, you know, we know this from the research. It's a lot better than we think it's going to be. It's not as awkward, and and it's nice to do that ketchup. You know.
It's a really great point. You know, you're often it's not like you wake up the moresell you want to go to the gym, but you often find after going to the gym, you're like a different person. Like you do you do the thing, you make the action, you become a different person.
Yeah, no, that's exactly right. And it's I love that example too, because that's like today, Like you know, some of these things we're talking about, it's over the years, retirement, retirement, like decades, you know, and yeah, yeah, and I wake up and I'm like, I don't I don't want to go.
And you know, all those days that I don't go, I know how I feel at the end of the day, I feel a little bit more, you know, jittery or whatever, and I sort of wish I had just gone on a walk or run or whatever it is, whatever, the sort of flavor of exercise we're thinking about, right, Yeah, it changes you to do it.
Yeah, So why do people have such a hard time falling through in their plans for their long term goals? It must be related to the same reasons why they fall short of their long term goals.
Yeah, I mean, to some extent, I think I think some of it boils down to getting overly anchored on right now. Right, we sort of talked about this. Yeah, there's there's other versions to where we convince ourselves that we're thinking ahead of the future, but we're not doing it in that deep of a way, you know. So I think of procrastination as a great example, where I
tell myself I'll do something next week. It's it's not as if I'm not thinking ahead, like I'm saying that's when I'll do this thing, But like if I really thought deeply about it, I'm not I'm not going to finally take care of that like stack of papers on the dining room table, or like I'm not finally going to like organize my kids art projects. That I've been like saying I'll do for a while like next week, but I when I like, am not doing it this week.
But like there's other versions of this, you know, by the way, like saying yes to things in the future that I later regret, Like that's another version of I'll think ahead to the future, not that deep. That's like another sort of like mistake that makes it harder for us to do the things that we say we want
to do. And there's like one other one, which is that we sometimes we sometimes make a mistake in both directions where I I get overly anchored on my feelings right now and use those to project ahead, and I sort of say, like I'm making a decision for my future self, but what I'm really doing is sort of
like just using today's feelings to do that. Right. So I'm in the classic examples like you know, go to the grocery store and I'm right after dinner, I'm not that hungry, and I come home and during the week I'm wondering, like where are my snacks. I should have bought more food, or you know the rever you know, I go they're hungry, and I get all this food
that I end up throwing out. That's the sort of like classic surface level example, but like there's other versions of this, right, Like I you know, if I'm depressed, I think I will always remain this way, right, And if I have like a surge of energy, I may take on projects that are too big because I think I'll continue to have this same level of energy moving forward, and then like halfway through the project, I'm wondering, like, yeah, why did I do that?
That'sespecially hard for people to buipolar disorder. Yeah, absolutely, to throw that wrench in there that this is a mental health podcast, Yeah, no, I mean it's absolutely right. You might you might be going through a phase, a matic phase where you think you you know, you can handle all this with your energy, and then you come crashing down or you really won't have it. In your book, you talk about a certain class of mistakes you call
time travel mistakes. Yeah, what things followed in that category?
Right? So you know when I talk about time travel, I mean I should be careful, Right, we're not really talking obviously, I think we know we're not talking about real time travel. I'm really interested in mental time travel. Yeah, I know, I know, yeah, and I know you know that right. But it's this concept I love right because we are, on the one hand, we're so good at
this as human beings. Like it's wild to think about how I can like jump ahead ten years in my mind and also think back to now and at the same time think back to when I was a kid, and like, all of these things canna happen in the span of seconds. But at the same time, we're also like, we make some mistakes, right, So I you know, in the book I talk about three types of error. So
one of them I said we miss our flight. When I mean by that is we It's like you're at the airport bar and you're having a drink and you look up and realize like, oh no, my flight is left, and you know what that is is basically like again, like being hyper focused on right now.
You know.
Another version of this is, you know what I call poor trip planning. Where I am, you know, sort of thinking ahead. I tell my stuff I'm thinking ahead, and I haven't really planned deeply. It's like I'm going on a trip, you know, I land in Boston and realize like I've done nothing, and then I spend half my time there like figuring out what to do. It's kind of wasted, it's inefficient, it's not that good. And then you know, the other time traveling error I talk about
is is what I call packing the wrong clothes. And this is the one where I'm using I'm using my present day feelings to project those ahead. You know, I'm in I'm in Chicago, it's winter. I'm going to Miami. I know it's going to be warmer there, but I but I don't. I don't quite move away from just how cold is in Chicago, and I end up packing a lot of stuff that I don't need. Now, you could say, well, what's the error there, Well, I could
have used that space for something different. But but in when it comes to time travel, the errors in not fully appreciating how my future self's interests may be different from the ones I have right now. And that's another version of really being mean to our future selves, or at least not that kind.
What a what an amazing concept being mean to your future self? Wow? Okay, this stuff is pretty deep. Everyone ultimately wants to self actionalize in my world, you know, in my kind of real area of research and that and that kind of actualization of their full potential is always a future thing that no one's ever going to achieve actually achieve. We always get closer and closer to it. I mean, we never like precisely become that future self, right, It's always like a direction, not a destination.
I think that's exactly right. And it's where you know, I love the metaphor of the future self as another person, but it's where that breaks down, right, because I never turn into another person. I never turn into my spouse or my best friend, and you know, you never There's not like I don't think there's a moment where we wake up and say, now I have become my future self. But I think the way you said it is exactly right. It's more of a path on the way to becoming
that that version of us that that we want. One thing I think is really interesting here is some some researchers have found that when we think about turning into our future selves, we incorporate the notion of positive change into similarity. What that means is, I think I can become more of you know, quote unquote who I am, while at the same time changing right, So I'm becoming
more magnanimous, more open, more empathetic, more patient. Those are big changes, but I incorporate that that change into like now sort of arriving at the ideal or the actualized version of me in the future. It's kind of a nice trick, a nice little psychological quirk.
Maybe yeah, yeah, no, I like it. All we can do is make individual momentary choices that either move us in the direction of who we want to become or drastically move us in the opposite direction, and choices choices that up well.
Multi that what you what you just said is so important because we're really bad at seeing that math, right,
I know. We're so good at making exceptions, I know, right, And so I can like, I know that, you know, I shouldn't snack as much at night as I like do, right, And it's like and it's like, but like every night I can come up with a really good excuse why tonight it's the night that I should uber eat to we probably do from the same place, and it's you know, it's really fascinating to me because we don't we don't see how all of those things add up in a
way because we're not like it's forced to you know, like if I order the large froyo tonight. It's not as if tomorrow I suddenly wake up looking different or feeling wildly different.
You can do it seven days in a row and you actually will.
Yeah, it's so true. It's so true.
Yeah. Anyway, that that one, that one hit, that one quit close to it resonates. So on a more positive note, what are some of the solutions people can do to implement to do better?
Yeah, and I really I'm glad that you asked that, because I am ultimately hopeful about this stuff. I'm ultimately optimistic, you know, And I know and I know you know that. I know that you are too, but you know, so I I've thought about it in terms of three buckets. So one of them is is making the future self more emotionally close to who we are now. To try to figure that out, the gist there is, well, you can kind of steal from what charities do really well.
Charities make charity recipients more vivid. They tell a story, they show a picture, you know, and so I sure do you know, and they do it really well. I mean it's not always perfect, but it's like they know that that's so much better than you know, a paragraph of statistics, right, and so I mean, you think about some of these things that we use to try to motivate people, Like, you know, financial advisors they show you that compound interest chart and they think that's emotional, and
it's like, it's not. Most people don't really care about that. They do though, they love they love that they do they and they think that's emotional, but not everybody else does, you know. So so we you know, we've we've played with different ideas. We've you know, we've we've literally used age progression and we've shown people what they look like. And actually, just a week or two ago, a company in Europe ask people to upload a photo of themselves and then write down what an ideal day and their
retirement looks like. And so this woman writes, you know, I'll be running through a field of poppies with my three dogs, and and like you know, then they use AI tools and like suddenly and in seconds you have this like beautiful picture of this woman with like three golden retrievers in this field of purple flowers.
You know.
Yeah, but like's not that's not like the only solution, right, So, I mean, there's also ways to try to make the future self more vivid by. One of the techniques I like is by writing a letter too and then from your future self, which is so nice because it forces you to really step into the shoes of that of that future person. So that's one big bucket, right, make
the future self closer. Another one is to you know, almost stop for a second and recognize that all of these back and forth, all these present future things, the person who making all of the sacrifices is the present self. That's like kind of a bad relationship, right, Like, imagine you're in a relationship, like you're the one who's always always sacrificing, right right, great point, you'd be like, you know what, it's time to live for me right now,
you know. And so so one thing that I've been really excited about exploring is, you know, what are the ways that we can almost turn the dial down on how painful those sacrifices feel and almost reframe things? Right, So, how can I make that present day sacrifice not feel
so bad? How can I like connect it to the bigger picture, or how can I I mean, you know, my like one research example that I love, we ask people if they wanted to sign up for a savings account that was either one hundred and fifty bucks a month or five dollars a day. It's the same amount of money, but five bucks a day, it just feels
it feels easier. Like most people can say, like not most, a lot of people can say there's something I'll give up for five bucks a day that dials, you know, the notch down on the psychological pain, and people are wildly more likely to sign up for that account when it's framed us five dollars other four times is likely to sign up. So I've been trying to explore, like, what are some other ways that we can make the
present sacrifices feel easier to undertake? And then I'll say the third bucket is to recognize that, despite my best intentions, I'll probably screw up. Right, So, you know, we're having this conversation today about how I don't want to snack tonight, and like, I know, I'm going to get home and it's been a long day and I'm going to like open up the pantry and I'm going to see the like leftover candy and be like, you know, and so one thing that I've really come to appreciate is commitment.
Device is ways that I can try to put the you know, almost the like guardrails on to make sure I don't screw up when faced with temptation. These have been around for a long time, but what I've become deeply interested in is what are the ways that we can try to motivate people to take on commitment devices, Because it turns out they're really effective once they're adopted, but they're not adopted that much because people don't want to do something that could put them in trouble later on. Right,
So how do we change that messaging? What parts of the experience do we get people to think about? And that's an ongoing question that I'm currently exploring right now.
Well, I see why you're in a marketing school that those are questions a lot of marketers ask as well.
Yeah, they really are. I mean, you know, it's funny I as, you know, as a quick previewer. This is really preliminary, but this is work with one of my graduate students, Megan Weeber. We I went in thinking if you get people to consider the pain, you know, how bad they'll feel if they go off course, that'll help them sign up, you know, for commitment device, you know, instead what we're finding is when you get people to think about how good they'll feel for following through ends up.
I love that moving the needle and it's it's really nice in a way because it's like from a marketing standpoint too, it's like, you don't want to make people feel bad, you know, so this is really preliminary, you know, but it's it's something I'm excited about exploring.
I think that's really profound and true. Make yeah, people feel good when they you know, their self esteem increases, you know, if you can meddle into their self esteem
a little bit. You know, competence and self worth are two major dimensions of self esteem, right, and if you can make them feel more competent by letting them think they've made some decision that where they've taken control of their life, absolutely can affect that in some sort of like a prize like congrats you've you've you know, Apple does that with the fitness app. You know you the trophy for ten thousand steps, you know, the trophy who gives a fuck about it? From imaginary from Apple?
Exactly did you give me any of your money?
No?
But I did get three rings that went all the way around.
Why does anyone care about that? I've always wondered, But people seem to care, or else they wouldn't they you know, they tested it and marketed you know, yeah, they wouldn't a marketer for that wouldn't still.
Be a wouldn't still be a feature if they didn't care.
Yeah, But now, how do these solutions apply beyond the individual to groups? You know and groups future selves? Do future selves of organizations?
Right?
We imagine working in an organization and you're trying to motivate everyone to be like, look, everyone, this is the future of this organization if we work it hard at this. That seems very relevant too.
Yeah, absolutely, I mean, and I think, you know, I want to get I want to be careful about not you know, saying corporations are people too, But you know, I think but but no, I'm kidding, of course, but like, yeah, that is part of it, right, that an organization has its own personality, and that means it has a current
personality and ultimately a future personality. One bit of research that I think is really relevant here is that when when you get CEOs or you know, executives to sort of do a time traveling exercise, the letters that they write end up being more vivid and more emotional and more concrete, and those are types of things that can you know, help employees and help members of an organization feel more committed moving forward.
Right.
So, I think there's a lot of room to be done there, and there's a lot of work that that I think really needs to be tackled. But the suggestion is a great one, you know, but you know, you can go beyond organizations and think about in some ways,
you know, climate decisions and decisions about resource allocation. These are decisions that also impact sort of current society and future society, right, And those are really tricky problems because there's a lot of there's a lot of current day problems that make sense to try to solve, but if I ignore the future ones, they just get worse too. So it's figuring out what's that, what's the how do you balance that out, and what's the allocation there?
Well, it's the million dollar question for those who are environmentalists, who have been trying to explain to people why it matters to think about the environment a thousand years from now, and it's very hard for people to think in those terms. Their effective altruists are trying to solve this problem too, you know.
Yeah, that's right, and that's I mean, that is you know, at this sort of centerpiece of that movement and long termism, And it's really it can be controversial because all I have to do is I don't have to look very far to see all of the problems right now and then say do something now to affect people in seven generations? I don't know, you know, And I think.
That like a point that sometimes that people make, the critics of that make that they have they have a point is there's so much uncertainty between now and then, you know, so many things could change, can change the models, you know, And so I think this is my last question, you know, isn't it really difficult to do things for a future selves when we're faced with so much existential angst and uncertainty?
It is so difficult. And I hear this all the time from you know, like undergrads and young people who say, like you too, I don't want to save why should I save? You know, when they're looking at all these things, And it's true, I don't. I don't blame them at all, you know, I've been thinking a lot about this, and when I was wrapping up the book, I was I was really sort of worried about this. I reached out to this guy, Xander Rose, who's one of the directors
of the Long Now Foundation. It's one of these like long termism foundations and cool name. It's a great name, and.
Well, I think Xander Rose is a cool name.
That's also a cool name. It's all cool, you know. One of the things that he pointed out to me, which I hadn't fully appreciated, is like, it's not the first moment in history where people are faced with existential angs. You know, you think about the Cuban missile crisis, et cetera. And just because we're experiencing that existential angst doesn't mean
that times progression will somehow stop, right. We can't stop the future from coming just because we're worried about it, right, And so it may make sense to transfer some of our attention and resources and allocutions to now rather than later, because the future feels so uncertain on the one hand. On the other hand, you can easily see how not paying attention to the future will only cause some present day problems to almost mushroom out of control as the
future comes. And so I think, I feel like this is a really difficult problem. And one of the things I talk about in the book is, you know, to sort of celebrate the present in a way, to like to live for today, because you know, ultimately the things we do today are those are the experiences that our future selves will look back on. And I think, you know, you consider what things you want to do and what
things you don't want to do. That the problem I have is when you sort of only live for today, you only wait today's experiences, and you just constantly say that and then and then I think you end up in trouble later on. Right, And so, at the risk of sounding to Southern California about this, there's you know, an intentionality that I think is nice here.
Right.
So if I'm a little more intentional about how I'm deploying my time and attention and money and experiences, I don't know, maybe that ends up being better for me now and for me later, But it requires some work. It's not the type of thing that I think is just you know, the snap of a finger as we're all set.
Yeah, I'm sure there's a proposition you can vote for in the next ballot for that one.
That is very California, I know, I trust me.
There's four hundred and ninety seven thousand propositions. I'm sure that's one intentionality about your future self should be a proposition on the That was an inside California joke. That's an inside California joke, but I knew you'd get it. I just want to end with kind of an what I'm what comes up for me? Can I tell you
what's coming up for me? Yeah? Keep. I think people are sometimes too obsessively focused on trying to reach their goals and reach their future self that neglect thinking about the impact of our actions on the future selves of others and the future selves. So not just my own of like or even just group futures, but literally, like not every future self has to be you, that that
you're impacting in this world. And yeah, I just I wish that people would also really consider the implications and consequences of their actions today for the collective good, the collective self future self. If that's a concept that makes sense.
It makes so much sense to me. You know, so much of the so much of the work I've done is on these sort of you know individual selves. You know who I am now, who I'll be in ten years, which is important for sure, of course it is, but it's it would be it would be almost divorce from reality if my future self was just this, you know, monol at, this solo entity. Right. It's like I'm hoping that I will have family and friends and colleagues and like all of and then and then beyond and beyond
like like you said, that sort of collective. All of that plays into my conception of self, that plays into the groups I want to be part of. And so I love what you said that these decisions I'm making now will impact me later, but also not just me, but others and others who I might care about and love, maybe even more that my own future self.
Yeah. Yeah, it can also help us face mortality as well, knowing that there are selves that live on beyond our own selves.
I think it's a beautiful sentiment. It's something I've really been It's something that I've found really comforting in the in the philosophical literature. Normally philosophical literature is not to get through. But you know, if you sort of step back and say that this self isn't isn't necessarily like the meat on my bones, and it's not you know, the my face and my name, but sort of like what I stand for and the values that I have.
I do think it can help confront mortality because it allows us to see how those those aspects of ourselves can be continuous between our own selves over time, but also in the selves of others. You know, one of my friends from my first my first academic job was at NYU, and one of my colleagues there and really good friends, Tom Mavis, unfortunately got diagnosed with with summa cancer about two years ago, and I had corresponded with
him a little bit during this time. It was unfortunately very fast, and he actually started reading some of the Philosophy and he said that some of these older ideas from Derek Parfit the philosopher actually really comforted him knowing that part of him is going to live on and his wife and his son. And I found that didn't make it any easier for those around him, I think, but I think it probably helped him during that time.
Yeah. Yeah, Well, I want to detend on that sentiment. You know, that's your work has far reaching implications, and I really wish you all the best and your book tour. You're probably still maybe have not even started it yet's just starting to check off, could go. That's all the best. I'm very grateful for you coming on my podcast today.
Hey, thank you so much for having me, Scott. This is such a fascinating conversation.
Sure was, and I'm sure our listeners will think so too. Thanks for listening to this episode of The Psychology Podcast. If you'd like to react in some way to something you heard, I encourage you to join in the discussion at thus Psychology podcast dot com or on our YouTube page The Psychology Podcast. We also put up some videos of some episodes on our YouTube page as well, so
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Mmmm.