Sometimes—well, every day in fact—I do something that affects my future self.
Sometimes, these things are small and rather straightforward, like leaving dirty dishes in the sink for “future me” to deal with the next day. Big deal! I think. That guy can handle it. But other times, these things are not so straightforward; they have a more nebulous and uncertain impact on future me. Should I save more for retirement? What impact does this exercise regimen have ten years from now? Should I skip blogging today?
In aggregate, these not-so-straightforward things have a drastic impact once viewed in the context of weeks and months and years. The decision to treat myself to a cookie, if viewed as an isolated episode, may not be such a big deal. But having a fistful of cookies every day for years on end? A bigger deal. But the reality, of course, is that I rarely enter into this high-level view of my own life; it’s much easier to stay on the ground and just, y’know, just eat the cookie.
So why is it so difficult to consider this future self? A cookie habit, if serious enough, could lead to some health difficulties decades from now. Why can’t I empathize with that future self? It’s me I’m talking about here!
According to psychologist Hal Hershfield, there are neurological underpinnings to this difficulty of future self empathy that we face:
Thinking about the future self elicits neural activation patterns that are similar to neural activation patterns elicited by thinking about a stranger. (emphasis mine)
This reality is extremely concerning. Hershfield’s research covers many facets of this troubling alignment, and has spent significant time looking into the fact that so few Americans have saved adequately for retirement. With the onus for savings placed directly on individuals (not the case for those who pensions), saving for retirement poses the challenging question of how we relate to our future selves.
Is there anything we can do about it?
In a thoughtful (and readable!) opinion piece published in Current Opinion in Psychology, Hershfield suggests that there are at least two tactics we can use to strengthen the relationship between our current and future selves:
1. Consider your future self more vividly.
In the charity domain, for example, researchers have consistently found that when charity recipients are more vivid, they receive more in donations. Vivid examples are emotional, and emotion tends to drive behavior more than cold, calculated thought. To this end, a series of studies have explored the effectiveness of making the future self more vivid, and by extension, more emotionally evocative.
While there are several “face-aging” apps available that allow you to “see” your future self in 10 years, 20 years, etc., the important thing here is vividness. This is where practices like long-term planning can come in handy: Where do I want to be in 10 years? Considering that tenuous connection between the people we are today and the people we will be is one way to make the latter more vivid to us.
2. Consider your responsibility to other people.
In a related intervention, the notion that the future self can be thought of as another person was taken to a more literal level. Many retirement appeals frame retirement saving as an act of self-interest, but if the future self can be considered another person, then such appeals maybe poorly framed. As a result, in a field study with university employees, one group of adults were asked to consider the responsibility that they had to their future selves in retirement, while another group of adults were reminded that saving for retirement would be in their best self-interest. Overall, the message that played on the notion that the future self is another person (the message that asked people think of the responsibility they have to their future selves) worked better at prompting positive changes to 401k accounts.
I love this tactic because it was the opposite of what I expected. Proceeding rationally, this tactic looks at the real but weird fact that we consider our future selves to be strangers…and doesn’t do anything about that fact. Instead—and this is delightfully subtle—this tactic accepts that tension between self and stranger and asks us to develop that relationship through simple empathy.
Taylor Coe 