Does feeling close to your future self make you more patient?
People who felt more connected to their future selves chose larger delayed rewards more often, but only if they also had a clear sense of who they are.
Source
The effect of future self-continuity on intertemporal decision making: a mediated moderating model
Study at a glance
- Design
- Human experiment — Study 1 online questionnaire with structural equation modelling; Study 2 between-subjects reading-and-writing manipulation of high vs low future self-continuity, then a 27-item monetary choice task.
- N
- N=234 · Study 1: 370 valid questionnaires; Study 2: 234 students (117 per condition), used as the primary N.
- Population
- Chinese young adults and college students
- Outcome
- Time discount rate on the monetary-choice questionnaire; future outcome consideration as mediator; self-concept clarity as moderator
Structured fields used in claim comparison tables when every cited study has a complete layer.
What they did
In Study 1, young adults completed questionnaires on how similar, vivid and positive their self in ten years seemed, how clear their self-concept was, and a set of choices between smaller-sooner and larger-later sums of money. In Study 2, college students were randomly assigned to read a passage saying people stay basically the same over life, or change fundamentally, and then wrote about similarities or differences between their present and future selves. They then rated how much they consider future consequences and made the same money choices on a computer.
What they found
In both studies, higher future self-continuity went with lower discounting, meaning more patient choices, though the associations were small. Self-concept clarity moderated this: the link held for people with a clear self-concept and vanished for people with an unclear one. In Study 2 the manipulation strongly shifted self-continuity, and considering future consequences fully accounted for the moderated effect, so clear-self people who felt continuous with their future selves thought more about future outcomes, which predicted more patient choices.
The limits
What it doesn't show
Effects were small, and some moderation tests relied on one-tailed Bayesian estimates; the full mediation model also had a mediocre fit. Only the self-continuity manipulation was experimental; self-concept clarity and future outcome consideration were measured, so their causal roles are not established. The reward task involved hypothetical-looking money choices with only a random chance of payment, samples were Chinese students, and the Study 1 main-effect results report two different coefficients, one identical to Study 2's, which suggests a reporting error.
Key terms
- Intertemporal choice
- Choosing between outcomes that occur at different times, such as a smaller reward now or a larger reward later.
- Time (delay) discounting
- The reduction in subjective value of a reward as its delay grows; a higher discount rate means less patience.
- Future self-continuity
- How similar, vivid and connected one's future self feels to one's present self.
- Self-concept clarity
- How clearly, confidently and consistently a person defines who they are.
- Moderated mediation
- A model in which an indirect path from cause to outcome through a mediator changes in strength depending on a third, moderating variable.
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Quiz yourself
What does a lower time discount rate mean?
Common questions
How can you manipulate how connected someone feels to their future self?
Here participants read a passage claiming personality stays stable or changes radically over life, then wrote about similarities or differences between themselves now and in ten years.
Why would self-concept clarity matter?
The authors argue that feeling connected to your future self only helps if you clearly know what you want, so you can see how present choices serve future needs.
Were the effects large?
No; correlations with discounting were small, even though the manipulation of self-continuity itself was strong.
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