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In the psychology of self, the future self concerns the processes and consequences associated with thinking about Self in the future. People think about their future selves similarly to how they think about other people. The extent to which people feel psychologically connected (e.g., similarity, closeness) to their future self influences how well they treat their future self. When people feel connected to their future self, they are more likely to save for retirement, make healthy decisions, and avoid ethical transgressions. Interventions that increase feelings of connectedness with future selves can improve future-oriented decision making across these domains.
The psychological work that followed did not similarly argue for Parfit's normative view but has instead attempted to test the descriptive validity of Parfit's theory.
Daniel Kolak has extensively criticized the idea of the existence of a future self. In his book I am You, Kolak describes three opposing philosophical views regarding the continuity of consciousness: Closed individualism, Empty individualism, and Open individualism. Closed Individualism is defined as the default common sense view of identity where one's identity consists of a line stretching across time, which Kolak, argues is incoherent. Empty Individualism is the view that one's identity only exists for an infinitesimally small amount of time, and an individual person has an entirely different identity from moment to moment. Kolak instead advocates for Open Individualism, which is the view that everyone is in reality the same being, and that the "self" doesn't actually exist at all, similar to anattā in Buddhist philosophy.
In 2009, Hal Hershfield and colleagues introduced a new measurement of psychological connectedness by adapting the Inclusion of Other in the Self Scale, where the relationship between present and future selves is depicted with seven pairs of successively overlapping circles. Using this measurement, Hershfield, as well as Daniel Bartels and Oleg Urminsky, have now demonstrated a robust relationship between psychological connectedness and discount rates. The more psychologically connectedness people feel between present and future selves, the more they care about the future, and the more they Discounting present benefits.
The randomized experiments revealed a causal relationship between feeling connected to one's future self and subsequently making more patient long-term decisions.
The finding has been conceptually replicated with multiple diverse samples. In one field experiment, students from economically diverse backgrounds that had weekly interactions with an avatar of their future self demonstrated heightened performance during a financial education course. A team of researchers, in collaboration with Ideas42, launched another replication with thousands of Mexicans. Before deciding whether to sign-up for an automatic savings account, the treatment group was asked to spend time vividly imagining their lives in the distant future. Compared to a 1% take up rate in the control condition, 3% of people in the treatment condition enrolled in the automatic savings account.
The effect of psychological connectedness on financial decision making is moderated by knowledge about future outcomes. When people are unaware of their future financial needs, regardless of how connected they feel, they are unlikely to save for the future. Similarly, people that have full information about the consequences of their financial actions will only save if they also feel connectedness with their future self. The researchers argue that policy makers who provide information to consumers on retirement savings should also consider simultaneously enhancing psychological connectedness. People are most likely to save rather than spend when they are knowledgeable about the outcomes of their decisions and feel connected to their future selves.
In 2017, the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau included a measure of psychological connectedness to the future self in its first Financial Wellbeing Survey.
However, in cognitive psychology, the future self is one type of a broader concept called 'possible selves'. These possible selves are psychological schema representing multiple alternative versions of self concept, encompassing past and future selves that together characterise regrets, doubts, hopes, worries, and fantasies about who we may have been previously and who we may become.Dunkel, C. and Kerpelman, J., Possible Selves: Theory, Research and Applications. Hauppauge, New York, USA: Nova Science Publishers, 2006.Baumeister, R. F. (Ed.), The Self in Social Psychology. Philadelphia, PA, USA: Taylor & Francis, 1999.
The way individuals envision their possible selves influences their behaviour and its outcomes. For example, when the future selves of a subject are indicative of unattainable fantasies, rather than reasonable expectations, effort and performance are lower across educational, dating, and medical contexts.
Identifying and exploring their possible selves with a therapist is one strategy by which clients pursue positive cognitive, emotional, and behavioural change in psychotherapy.Dunkel, C. S. and Kelts, D., Possible Selves as Mechanisms of Change in Therapy. In Dunkel, C. S. and Kerpelman, J. (Eds.), Possible Selves: Theory, Research and Applications. Hauppauge, New York, USA: Nova Science Publishers, 2006, pp187–204. An example of a technique that endeavours to facilitate this exploration can be seen in the work of British psychotherapist Paul Newham, who encourages clients to use creative writing and drama to express and personify past and future selves, in order to subsequently interpret their psychological significance.Casson, J., Drama, Psychotherapy and Psychosis: Dramatherapy and Psychodrama with People who Hear Voices. London, UK and New York, USA: Routledge, 2004.Okoth, Z. A., The use of drama therapy in unlocking the voices of survivors of female genital mutilation among the Kenyan Maasai. Nairobi, Kenya: Kenyatta University.Klein-Kiriţescu, L. A. M., Experiential innovations through voice therapy: A case study. Journal of Experiential Psychotherapy, Vol 16, No. 3, September 2013, pp10–14.
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