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Why We Procrastinate - Issue 9: Time - Nautilus

Why We Procrastinate
We think of our future selves as strangers.

CU LT UR E | P SY CHOL OGY

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BY ALISA OPAR JANUARY 16, 2014

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t T W IT T E R

distinct from, the previous and subsequent ones. The boy who begins to smoke despite knowing that he may suffer from the habit decades later should not be judged harshly: This boy does not identify with his future self, Parfit wrote. His attitude towards this future self is in some ways like his attitude to other people. Parfits view was controversial even among philosophers. But psychologists are beginning to understand that it may accurately describe our attitudes towards our own decision-making: It turns out that we see our future selves as strangers. Though we will inevitably share their fates, the people we will become in a decade, quarter century, or more, are unknown to us. This impedes our ability to make good choices on theirwhich of course is our ownbehalf. That bright, shiny New Years resolution? If you feel perfectly justified in breaking it, it may be because it feels like it was a promise someone else made. Its kind of a weird notion, says Hal Hershfield, an assistant professor at New York Universitys Stern School of Business. On a psychological and emotional level we really consider that future self as if its another person. Using fMRI, Hershfield and colleagues studied brain activity changes when people imagine their future and consider their present. They homed in on two areas of the brain called the medial prefrontal cortex and the rostral anterior cingulate cortex, which are more active when a subject thinks about himself than when he thinks of someone else. They found these same areas were more strongly activated when subjects thought of themselves today, than of themselves in the future. Their future self felt like somebody else. In fact, their neural activity when they described themselves in a decade was similar to that when they described Matt Damon or Natalie Portman. And subjects whose brain activity changed the most when they spoke about their future selves were the least likely to favor large long-term financial gains over small immediate ones.

he British philosopher Derek Parfit espoused a severely reductionist view of personal identity in his seminal book, Reasons and Persons: It does not exist, at least not in the way we usually consider it. We humans, Parfit argued, are not a consistent identity moving through time, but a chain of successive selves, each tangentially linked to, and yet

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Why We Procrastinate - Issue 9: Time - Nautilus

Their future self felt like somebody else. In fact, their neural activity when they described themselves in a decade was similar to that when they described Matt Damon or Natalie Portman.

Emily Pronin, a psychologist at Princeton, has come to similar conclusions in her research. In a 2008 study, Pronin and her team told college students that they were taking part in an experiment on disgust that required drinking a concoction made of ketchup and soy sauce. The more they, their future selves, or other students consumed, they were told, the greater the benefit to science. Students who were told theyd have to down the distasteful quaff that day committed to consuming two tablespoons. But those that were committing their future selves (the following semester) or other students to participate agreed to guzzle an average of half a cup. We think of our future selves, says Pronin, like we think of others: in the third person. The disconnect between our present and time-shifted selves has real implications for how we make decisions. We might choose to procrastinate, and let some other version of our self deal with problems or chores. Or, as in the case of Parfits smoking boy, we can focus on that version of our self that derives pleasure, and ignore the one that pays the price. But if procrastination or irresponsibility can derive from a poor connection to your future self, strengthening this connection may prove to be an effective remedy. This is exactly the tactic that some researchers are taking. Anne Wilson, a psychologist at Wilfrid Laurier University in Canada, has manipulated peoples perception of time by presenting participants with timelines scaled to make an upcoming event, such as a paper due date, seem either very close or far off. Using a longer timeline makes people feel more connected to their future selves, says Wilson. That, in turn, spurred students to finish their assignment earlier, saving their end-of-semester self the stress of banging it out at the last minute. Hershfield has taken a more high-tech approach. Inspired by the use of images to spur charitable donations, he and colleagues took subjects into a virtual reality room and asked them to look into a mirror. The subjects saw either their current self, or a digitally aged image of themselves (see the figure, Digital Old Age). When they exited the room, they were asked how theyd spend $1,000. Those exposed to the aged photo said theyd put twice as much into a retirement account as those who saw themselves unaged.

We think of our future selves, says Pronin, like we think of others: in the third person.

This might be important news for parts of the finance industry. Insurance giant Allianz is funding a pilot project in the midwest in which Hershfields team will show state employees their aged faces when they make pension allocations. Merrill Edge, the online discount unit of Bank of America Merrill Lynch, has taken this approach online, with a service called Face Retirement. Each decade-jumping image is accompanied by startling cost-of-living projections and suggestions to invest in your golden years. Hershfield is currently investigating whether morphed images can help people lose weight.

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Why We Procrastinate - Issue 9: Time - Nautilus

DIGITAL OLD AGE: A photograph (left) and digitially aged avatar (right) of Professor Hal Hershfield.

Hal Hershfield

Of course, the way we treat our future self is not necessarily negative: Since we think of our future self as someone else, our own decision making reflects how we treat other people. Where Parfits smoking boy endangers the health of his future self with nary a thought, others might act differently. The thing is, we make sacrifices for people all the time, says Hershfield. In relationships, in marriages. The silver lining of our dissociation from our future self, then, is that it is another reason to practice being good to others. One of them might be you.

Alisa Opar is the articles editor at Audubon magazine. She often consigns Future Alisa to dealing with deadlines and chores.

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All that research by all these people, why not just watch The Simpsons. Marge: You know, some day these kids will be out of the house and you'll regret not spending more time with them. Homer: That's a problem for Future Dad. Man, I don't envy that guy. Season twenty-two, Episode Moneybart
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George Schaaf 7

a day ago

Be interesting to know what the fMRI showed if/when the subjects were asked to consider their past selves.
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astrodreamer

3 hours ago

You can't say that we fail to keep promises to ourselves because we feel as though they were made to others. It's precisely the opposite: it is only the promise we make to others that we must keep, that we might be punished for failing to keep. No one need even know that we have failed to keep a promise made to ourselves.
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katiehippie 2 Ordle

Why We Procrastinate - Issue 9: Time - Nautilus

8 hours ago

When I'm hurrying to finish something that I've put off too long, I realize that my past self hates my future self.
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14 hours ago

The section of Parfit could do with being tightened up. Firstly, you write about Parfit in the past tense, as if the view you accredit to him is not one he currently holds. However, so far as I am aware, Parfit continues to hold a fully reductionist view about personal identity. (Perhaps the author is unaware he is still alive!) Secondly, you misdescribe this view. According to Parfit, identity is perfectly real, but it is nothing 'over and above' (non-branching) chains of overlapping psychological connectedness (much as temperature is real but nothing over and above molecular motion). Parfit does suggest that this view about identity serves, in some sense, to dissolve the boundaries of the self by showing that the distinction between my life and that of others is not so hard and fast as it might have appeared if we had thought of identity as some 'further fact'. The errors here in describing Parfit's view are no less embarrassing than if you had mixed up the prefrontal and parietal cortex or described Einstein as the discoverer of the Uncertainty Principle. It's time that journalists reined in the extraordinary sloppiness with which they handle the ideas of philosophers.
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Joe

Ordle 13 hours ago

The author was talking about Parfit previous self when he first made this reductionist view, he is a different Parfit now hence the past tense ;)
7 eFarther

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8 hours ago

So, not only is it possible to have multiple current selves, but it's possible to also have different, even multiple possible, future selves? Sounds like we're walking examples of string theory. That's c-r-a-a-a-a-a-z-y!
1 Patrick778
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9 hours ago

Btw, that's a poor example of digital aging. Ah, if only the jawline and neck remained unaffected! (Of course, the subject may be relatively young and only a victim of premature graying, or he might have had a bit of work done.)
1 Sgt Castle
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3 hours ago

Calling bullshit on this one using Occum's Razor. Far too complex an explanation for something that has a far simpler answer. Laziness and allowing individuals to better manage their own valuable time, by "spooling" day to day events explains this better in my opinion.
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Dan

Sgt Castle 2 hours ago

The point of the research is that, unlike general reluctance to do something unpleasant, their attitude to drinking the foul mixture is reference-dependent; a student should be just as "lazy" about drinking ketchup-soy sauce today as they would be to drink it in a month. How you do you explain that using "laziness"?
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skotski

15 hours ago

so are they actually insinuating that people who smoke are less likely to be good to other people? Maybe I misunderstood, but if so that is ludicrous.
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nirbhay

skotski 11 hours ago

No, I think you are taking it in a wrong way. In your context I think it only means that if that if you are not bothered about smoking of others, so you'll also not bother yourself from smoking. Because you see your future self in same way as you see others according to this article.
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Shinsei Ryu

skotski 11 hours ago

I am not certain but I think it like How much would you care about a person who is just like you and you probably never meet since future and presend dont mix
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Inovativo

a day ago

Good read.
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