Category : PipNews

I want you to imagine yourself 20 years from now.

Imagine what you will be doing, who you will be hanging out with and how you will feel.

Can you do it?

If you found you could vividly imagine this you are connected to your future self. If you found it more difficult that’s understandable, 20 years is a very long time and a lot can happen.

We don’t really know how to predict the future, we can only make a guess based on our present. And yet we have to make decisions about our future selves all of the time. Should you look after yourself now to avoid health problems 10 years down the line? Will you be happy in 20 years if you marry your partner? Do you really want to cut your disposable income now to save for a pension? All of these are decisions that you have to make for your future self.

It turns out that we can predict how people will behave in the present based on how similar or dissimilar they feel to their future selves. For example, people who feel similar to their future selves are more likely to put off easy rewards now for bigger ones in the future (remember the Marshmallow Test? See link here) [1].

In fact, one group of researchers took this to extremes. They took pictures of participants and manipulated them so that they looked a lot older than they really were. They then put the participants in a virtual reality environment in which they looked in the mirror and saw either their present face or their older face. Afterwards, the participants did a monetary task in which they decided how much they would save for retirement. People who had seen the photo of their older selves saved a lot more than people who had seen their current photo [1].

Other research has shown that it’s not just about knowing that you will need something in the future but actually recognising that you have control over making it happen. People’s perception of the level of control they have over ageing, for example staying healthy and socially active, predicts how likely they are to plan financially for the future [2].

When it comes to decisions about the future it can be easy to put them off. “What will it matter if I hold off on starting a pension for another 5 or 10 years?” we say. Well actually it might make a big difference but if our future selves seem like distant other people it can be hard to feel empathy. If you’re a procrastinator when it comes to your pension why not try an exercise? Really try to imagine what you will be like in 20 years, what you will need and what you might regret doing or not doing that you have control over now.

And if you really need some external help upload a photo of yourself looking disappointed here: http://in20years.com/. Seeing your future self frowning at your present self might just spur you into action.

References

1. Hershfield, H. E. (2011). Future self‐continuity: how conceptions of the future self transform intertemporal choice. Annals of the New York Academy of Sciences, 1235(1), 30-43.
2. Heraty, N., & McCarthy, J. (2015). Unearthing psychological predictors of financial planning for retirement among late career older workers: Do self-perceptions of aging matter? Work, Aging and Retirement, 1(3), 274-283.

A small girl sits alone in a room. In front of her on the table sits a large, pink marshmallow.

She stares at it longingly.

Suddenly she reaches her hand out to it and then, with a sudden change of mind, pulls her hand back. She sits on both of her hands and stares uncomfortably at the marshmallow for another 10 minutes.

This scene played out in a small room in Stanford University in the 1960s where a psychologist called Walter Mischel tried out his new study [1]. Mischel and his team of researchers put a marshmallow in front of each child and told them that they could either eat it immediately or wait until the researcher returned in a few minutes at which stage they would get two marshmallows.

Some children waited and were rewarded. Other children just couldn’t stop themselves from eating the marshmallow.

This simple experiment is a test of what is called delayed gratification, the ability to hold off on something you want now in anticipation of a bigger reward later.

What is incredible about this research is that Mischel followed the children over five decades. The children who had delayed eating the marshmallow when they were 4 had much better willpower throughout their lives [2]. They had stronger academic scores, better social connections and were less susceptible to stress [1].

We can think of many situations where delayed gratification may apply. Do you forgo a night out in to study for your exam in anticipation of getting the job you want? Do you put in extra effort in work now to improve your chances of getting a promotion? Do you smoke one cigarette now or do you push through the craving?

Of course we all give in sometimes but generally speaking if you can delay gratification at least some of the time it will stand to you in what you want to achieve.

Ok so…what if you were the child who would have eaten the marshmallow?

There are techniques that we can use to improve our ability to delay gratification. The craving that you get for the cigarette or the marshmallow is part of the ‘hot’ system in your mind. This is when you think about how sweet and delicious the marshmallow will taste when you eat it. The ‘cool’ system is the more rational part of your mind that considers the long-term implications of eating it versus waiting [3].

You may be able to override the ‘hot’ impulse by thinking ‘cool’ thoughts. That may be actively thinking through the consequences before rushing into something, distracting yourself from the immediate reward or just imagining it in a more abstract way. Instead of thinking about how much you’d like to go to the pub now can you envision your disappointment if you fail the exam?

It might not always work but trying to stop the ‘hot’ system from taking over might just get you through the worst of the cravings until you’re rewarded with your two marshmallows.

References

1. Mischel, W., et al. (1989). Delay of gratification in children. Science, 244(4907), 933–938.
2. Casey, B. J., et al. (2011). Behavioral and neural correlates of delay of gratification 40 years later. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, 108(36), 14998–15003.
3. Metcalfe, J., & Mischel, W. (1999). A hot/cool system analysis of delay of gratification: Dynamics of willpower. Psychological Review, 106(1), 3–19.