Guest User

June 8, 2023

Episode 256: Prof. Hal Hershfield: Your Future Self

Guest User

June 8, 2023

Hal Hershfield is a Professor of Marketing, Behavioral Decision Making, and Psychology at UCLA’s Anderson School of Management.

His research, which sits at the intersection of psychology and economics, examines the ways we can improve our long-term decisions. He earned his PhD in psychology from Stanford University.

Hershfield publishes in top academic journals and also contributes op-eds to the New York Times, Harvard Business Review, the Wall Street Journal, and other outlets. He has consulted with the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, many financial services firms such as Fidelity, Prudential, Merrill Lynch, and marketing agencies such as Droga5. The recipient of numerous teaching awards, Hershfield was named one of “The 40 Most Outstanding B-School Profs Under 40 In The World” by business education website Poets & Quants. His book, Your Future Self: How to Make Tomorrow Better Today, was just published.

How does the connection we have with our future self impact the decisions we make today? And what active steps can we take to improve our connection with our future selves? Today on the show we welcome back Hal Hershfield, whose new book Your Future Self: How to Make Tomorrow Better Today delves into the science of our relationship with our future selves and what we can do to change it for the better. In our conversation with Hal, we discuss the concept of the self, how we change over time, and why so many of us feel disconnected from our future selves. He describes the research surrounding these subjects and their findings, including how the brain scans they performed demonstrate that we mostly see our future selves as strangers, and why this is caused, at least in part, by the fact that our future selves don’t technically exist yet. We also discuss the interventions that have been shown to improve our relationship with our future selves, like viewing age-progressed images or exchanging letters with our future selves, and why everyone responds to these interventions differently. Having a strong connection with your future self has many benefits. It means you’re more likely to make decisions that will serve you later in life, like saving for retirement, eating healthily, and exercising regularly. But Hal also warns that we risk losing sight of the present and what truly matters when we focus solely on the future. To hear all of Hal’s knowledgeable insights on this topic and what he wants to explore next, be sure to tune in today!

Key Points From This Episode:

Defining the self and how our identity shifts depending on age, context, and the people we surround ourselves with. (0:04:08)

An overview of Hal’s research and what it reveals about how most people connect (or don’t connect) to their future selves. (0:08:29)

How empathy can influence our connection to our future selves. (0:11:36)
Insights into why we tend to think of our future self the same way we think about strangers or acquaintances. (0:14:19)
Our level of connection to our future self and how it affects wealth accumulation and financial well-being. (0:17:53)
The definition of ‘present bias’ and ‘hyperbolic discounting’ and the role they play in decisions about the future. (0:19:28)
The end-of-history illusion and the impact it has on our decisions. (0:23:02)
How viewing age-progressed images of yourself can help you build a connection with your future self. (0:26:35)
The research Hal is conducting with MIT Media Lab using an AI chatbot called Future You. (0:29:35)
Dan Pink’s work on the power of regret and how it overlaps with Hal’s research and findings. (0:31:59)
The findings on being presented with age-progressed images of ourselves and how they impact our decision-making and relationship with our future selves. (0:35:20)
How writing to your future self can improve your decisions. (0:40:16)
The problems that arise when we become too focused on improving life for our future self and how to find harmony between the present and future. (0:44:03)
The COVID-19 pandemic and its impact on our collective relationship with the future. (0:48:10)
Learn about the live episode we’ll be recording at the upcoming Future Proof conference with Hal as our guest. (0:51:24)

Read The Transcript:

Ben Felix: This is the Rational Reminder Podcast, a weekly reality check on sensible investing and financial decision-making from two Canadians. We're hosted by me, Benjamin Felix and Cameron Passmore, portfolio managers at PWL Capital.

Cameron Passmore: Welcome to Episode 256, and this week we welcome back. I think he's become a good friend of ours, Ben, Professor Hal Hershfield, who a couple days ago just released the book called Your Future Self: How to Make Tomorrow Better Today. Hal, as you may remember, was on Episode 141, is a very terrific guy, terrific guest, and his insights from this book are incredible. I think you'd agree, Ben. It's so important to try to get a sense of what your future self might be, and to build a relationship with your future self. So Hal wrote a book exactly on that.

Ben Felix: Hal's research, generally speaking, is kind of at this intersection of psychology, and economics, which from the perspective of our podcasts, and the type of information that we tried to provide to people, it's an absolutely perfect fit. It's all about improving long-term decision-making, which is basically what this whole conversation is about. One of the things that was really affirmed for me during this conversation, I don't know if I thought about it or not when I was reading the book, but how this meshes with Dan Pink's work on regret.

Talking to Hal got me thinking about this, that one of the reasons that I think that the regret lens of asking what constitutes a good life is powerful is because it puts you in the shoes of your future self, to look back at what current behaviours you might regret. I think that Hal's work is another aspect of that, or another angle on that thought process of putting yourself in the shoes of your future self and thinking back to today on what your future self would want your current self to be doing. Of course, Hal has all kinds of empirical work on this, but just the way that he talks about it, I think is very compelling.

Cameron Passmore: It's a good point. I drove back from Montreal yesterday, and I re-listened to our Episode 246 with Dan Pink. You're right, it does dovetail beautifully with this conversation. Hal is a professor of marketing, behavioural decision-making, and psychology at UCLA, Anderson School of Management, and holds the UCLA Anderson Board of Advisors' term chair in management. He earned his Ph.D. in Psychology from Stanford, publishes in top academic journals, and also contributes op-eds to the New York Times, Harvard Business Review, the Wall Street Journal, and many other outlets. I want to highlight to people to stick around to the end of the story about your son, which I think is a good story.

Ben Felix: He reads voraciously, and I don't know if he's finished it yet, but he's really started reading Hal's book.

Cameron Passmore: And he's how old?

Ben Felix: Eight.

Cameron Passmore: Pretty cool. Also, at the end, we do a bit of a promo for our upcoming live recording at Future Proof where Hal will be our special guest. So we talked about that event as well at the end.

Ben Felix: I'm very excited about that. We haven't seen the work that Hal's doing that we're going to be talking about at that event yet. Hopefully, we'll see it well in advance so that we can ask lots of good questions. But the way he describes it, I won't give it away, the way he describes what he's working on is just absolutely fascinating.

Cameron Passmore: I don't think we could have chosen or pre-written a better topic to discuss.

Ben Felix: No. And we asked Hal if he would do this, and then we had to figure out what we're going to talk about. So we're kind of probing, asking questions, trying to figure out where we're going to go. He's kind of like, "I am working on this one thing and he describes what it is," We’re like, "Wow, that's perfect, perfect." Anyway, we'll let Hal describe what it is at the end of the episode.

Cameron Passmore: All right. So let's go to our conversation with Professor Hal Hershfield.

***

Professor Hal Hershfield, it's great to welcome you back to the Rational Reminder Podcast.

Hey, thanks, guys. I'm so happy to be back. It's great.

Awesome. Congratulations on your recently released book, Your Future Self. I'm holding it up here. It's fantastic. I look forward to lots of great reviews on the book for you.

Thanks, Cameron. I appreciate that.

All right, Hal, let's kick it off with an easy one for you. What defines the self?

If that's where we're starting with, easy. This has been one of these topics that psychologists and philosophers have tried to grapple with over decades, if not, centuries and millennia. It's really a bundle of all different things. It's a bundle of emotions. It's a bundle of memories, and our preferences, and our tastes, and our connections. These are all the things that defines what it means to be me. One thing I think you'll notice there is that it's also social, who I'm around, and who I spend my time with helps define how I see myself as well, and that can change over time.

How many selves do you think people have through their lives?

It's so hard to say that there's a definitive answer, because the context that you're asking that question and will help define the answer that I would give. In other words, if I'm talking sort of, developmentally, I might say, "Well, there's about four or five selves. There's childhood, and adolescence, and then young adulthood, and adulthood, and sort of my middle age and later years. But you know, then, if I'm talking about sort of my relationship that I have with my kids, or my spouse, that can have many more selves, because there's sort of more event markers there.

I would say, overall, the way I might answer that is, many, because we do change over time. It's not that we're just completely different people at each of these different stages. But I think we can look back and say, "That was a prior version of me" or looking forward, "That is a future version of me."

More than one maybe is an easy way to answer it.

That's how I would say it, that's even smarter. I like that.

How much do people change over time?

There's some fascinating work on this. I get into this sort of topic in the book. But part of the way to answer that is, again, comes to what's the question that we're asking. In some ways, you can look at and say, "A ton." If I'm looking at things like the cells in my body, that's completely turned over. If I'm looking at my tastes and preferences over time, those may change to. I didn't like mushrooms growing up, hated them, and now, I quite like them. Now, that's a change that you might say, that surface level, but it's nonetheless a change. But our values also change over time. As we get older, we may become more conservative, we may become less conservative.

I think some of the most compelling research on this looks at personality. It's found that in a 10-year span, we can expect a decent amount of change, and one of our big five personality traits. If people aren't familiar, that robust finding in psychologies, that you may have these five core personality traits, openness to new experiences, conscientiousness, extraversion, agreeableness, and neuroticism. Well over 10 years, one of those might change, I might become more open, or I might become less extroverted. On that side of the equation, there's a lot of change. But if you look at it another way, four out of those five will stay the same. There's nuance there, it's not black and white. It's not that I can say, you'll change a ton or you won't change a ton. In certain aspects, you will, and others will remain "the same."

Are there aspects of the self that tend to be more stable over time?

There's aspects of the self that we want to be more stable over time. I'm not sure that they actually are. The aspects that we sort of want to think of as more stable are what researchers call core moral traits. Those are the things that we really point to as defining who we are. Ben, you seem like a kind, and relatively compassionate guy. I don't know where you are on that compassion spectrum, because I've never had to ask you for it. But if I noticed the big shifts, such that the next time we talked, you were kind of bitter, and not that kind. I will think, "Wow, Ben's really changed."

Those may be just as likely to change as our other sort of big five traits. When it comes to our motivation, we want to see those as remaining the same. Because if I can point to somebody and say, "You know what, they moved to a new city, and they like different foods, they changed their name. But at the core, they still retain those core moral traits. That's what I'll be able to say, I think there's a decent amount of similarity there over time.

How connected do people tend to feel to their, I guess, potentially changed future selves?

There's a continuum. I would say we all have a tendency to think of our future selves, as if they are different people. This is an analogy, but I think, to some extent, we sort of think of those future selves, as if they're sort of another person. But where we differ when you asked, how connected are people? I think the way to answer is that, some people will experience a great degree of connection with their future selves, the sort of connection that we feel to our kids if we love them, our spouses if we love them. Other people experience, not necessarily like a dislike, but they lack that strong connection.

The analogy that I like to use is, it's the co-worker of yours who's in the break room. You know they're there. It's not like you're surprised at their existence, but you're not that emotionally invested in them, you're not that close to them. That's another way of describing the relationship that some people have with their future selves.

Can you talk about what's happening inside of our brands that makes that connection difficult to make?

One of the things we know from neuroscience is that, the brain can tag what's me and what's not me. You throw me in the scanner, and you have me make judgments about myself. Versus Cameron, you're going to see a different pattern of activity in the brain. There's going to be more activity in these what's called cortical midline structures when I think of myself compared to when I think of Cameron.

Years ago, my colleagues and I, people in the scanner, I asked them to do this similar thing, where we had them make judgments about themselves and another person. But then also, to make judgments about themselves now and themselves in the future. When we did that, what we've found is that, on average, on this sort of brain level, people's future selves looked more like the way other people look in the brain. That's sort of signature activity there that you get when you think about another person. That's kind of what it looks like when people thought about their future selves. What's really interesting about this to me is that we can have these separations there, but that's on average. But some people feel a great degree of connection with their future selves, and then you don't see as big of a difference in the brain. Other people feel big gap, and then you do see more of that stark contrast between selves.

That's so crazy. Were you blown away when you found that when you're doing that research?

Most research doesn't look like those moments that you see dramatized, where it's like, "Oh, this is amazing discovery." But it was kind of like that. My collaborators on that, I remember we're looking at, "That's really wild." My mentor who I was working with at the time, Brian Knutson, actually encouraged me to do the whole thing again, because we wanted to make sure, is this real. And other groups have sort of gone to roughly similar findings. Because yes, it was really surprising, and it's really a powerful statement about the way that we think of ourselves in the future.

No kidding. Which emotion drives decisions that favour our current self or our future self?

I would almost answer it a different way. And to say it's not which emotion, it's just that emotions, behaviours, or current self. In other words, everything that's happening right now feels more intense than the stuff that we think is going to happen in the future. It's not that it's just like greed, or laziness, or pleasure or any of those things. It's also on the negative side I dread doing something right now and I don't want to experience that, so I pushed off to later. It's not that I would say that there's one emotion that necessarily colours their tendency to do things now versus later. It's just that, we're feeling so much emotion in the present, and it can lead us a bit astray. I want to be careful there, because there are a lot of times where it really makes sense to prioritize the present is what's happening. If we're thinking about what's certain and what's not certain, I'd rather do the thing that's certain. The problem becomes when I sort of excessively prioritize the present at the disservice of my future self.

I think I call it in your book that somebody had looked at a similar study to yours, where they found that empathy was the big driver of the tendency to favour the future self.

If you think about it, in those terms. That study, if I were to think about an emotion that can really impact these decisions about now versus later, I would say one good candidate is empathy. We were just talking about how our future selves are like other people. What that analogy means is that, if I can experience some empathic feelings for my future self, regardless of whether it's another person, then I'm going to be more likely to make decisions now and take actions now that will, at least, hopefully put my future self in a better position.

I found those two points together, one that you've found that we've really looked like strangers in our brains, then the second one, that emotion is kind of what moderates how well we treat our future selves. It's like, those two together really drive home the point that it's really like thinking about another person.

One of my collaborators on this work, Dan Martell, he's always caution. This is an analogy and it's really not a perfect one. Because there are other people in my life, who I have these relationships with, that have more or less empathy as a component of them. The big difference here is that, I eventually turn into my future self and I don't eventually turn into my kid or my spouse. But I think as an analogy, it's really useful because it can help put some frame around the way that we make these decisions over time.

I agree. I think it is a very nice analogy. What do you think it is about our future selves that makes them feel like a stranger?

It's such a deep question. There's so many things involved there. One of which is that they don't yet exist, and you can think about it. There are strangers in our lives, again, I said, the co-worker but it can also talk about the people all the way around the other side of the globe. They currently exist and we don't know them. Our future selves, they don't exist yet. It's incredibly hard, it's a tap into their emotions. We're really not that great at forecasting our feelings into the future. If you think about it, that's probably one of the core aspects of being able to relate to somebody if I can feel what they're feeling and see the world through their eyes. That is just a really difficult thing to do, which I think can increasingly make it likely that our future selves are seen as strangers. Then, another component that needs to be mentioned here is that it's really easy to get wrapped up in the present. That's where everything's happening, and can make it really hard to think beyond that.

It's so interesting to think about. Why wouldn't we want our future self to feel like a stranger?

If they feel like a stranger, it's going to make it really hard for us to do things right now that will benefit them. In other words, if our future selves are strangers, in some ways, it actually may be rational to overspend now. It may be rational to overeat. Because if you start saying, "Oh, no, don't do those things, don't overspend, don't overeat, don't sit on the couch, because it's going to harm you later." Well, it's not going to harm me, "me later." It's going to harm some stranger later, what do I care about that? I'm taking it to an extreme, of course. But that's the thinking that makes it so that I – I think we don't want to think of our future selves as strangers.

Derek Parfit, who’s the philosopher that's influenced a lot of my thinking, have this line where he said, "We shouldn't do unto future selves, what we wouldn't do unto others." That's a little extreme again, but the gist, I think, is a really interesting one. If I wouldn't harm this other person in my life, I probably shouldn't do the same thing with my future self?

Does it also take away some of life's excitement if you really do know your future self.

Yeah. I think this is such a cool question to grapple with, because I used to think, "Oh, if I do enough planning, if I do enough thinking, I'll set up my future self. I'll get to know who that guy is." The reality is, we just never come out. There are philosophers who pointed out that once we go through change, that change will change us, that sounds really abstract. But the basic idea is that, we can't fully anticipate how making a transition in our lives will impact our feelings, and our thoughts, and our decisions. We never really can know our future selves. But go back to your question. Okay. If you gave me a magic wand, and I got to waive it, and then suddenly know everything that'll happen, I think it would make for a much less exciting life. And probably, also a much more nerve-wracking one, because all of a sudden, I'd be waiting for this thing to happen on the negative side. On the positive side, I'd probably like lose any of the anticipation, and excitement, and surprise of something good happening. I know this is a deeply philosophical thought experiment, but I think it raises a great point.

When you look empirically, how does closeness to the future self affect stuff like wealth accumulation and financial well-being?

This is work that I and my colleagues have done, and others have done over the years. There's all sorts of documentation of this. If I feel closer to my future self, I am talking sort of in broad brush terms here. We've measured this in different ways. But generally speaking, if I feel more connected to my future self, that's been positively linked to wealth accumulation, to financial well-being, to self-reported health, to the tendency to act ethically when faced with the non-ethical option, grades and GPA, life satisfaction. A recent paper just came out suggesting that a greater sense of connectedness or continuity as my future self is also associated with more meaning in life. I should be careful. It's not always the same, but most of this research tries to be careful about taking into account other explanations and still finds these relationships there.

Do we know why? What explains that relationship?

Some of this is speculation. You can only go so far in the questions that you ask. But the gist is that if I feel more connected to my future self, it goes back to what we were talking about earlier. I'll be more likely to do things that make their life a little better. Another example, I didn't mention procrastination. If I can more vividly imagine those feelings of my future self. I may be less likely to procrastinate because deep down, I'll recognize that if I don't want to deal with those bills right now, like that guy in a week isn't going to want to do it either.

No. What role do present bias and hyperbolic discounting play in decisions about the future?

Let me just define those quickly, in case people aren't aware of what they are. Present bias is the tendency to put a lot of weight on the things that are happening right now. Hyperbolic discounting – well, let me talk about temporal discounting. For temporal discounting is the tendency to gradually devalue future rewards, So much so that I say, "Would you rather have $200 now or $200 in two months?" Well, I'd rather have it right now. That makes sense. That makes perfect sense. I can do more with it right now. But then you start to get cases where I say, "What about $200 now and $250 in a month?" But I still prefer now over later, I'm excessively discounting that future reward in favour of right now. Hyperbolic discounting is a really interesting specific case where I might tell myself – let's ask this question again. Let's say, "Would you rather have $200 in a month or $250 in two months?" If I got to ask that question, I probably say, "Well, I have to wait a month or two months, I'd rather just wait two months and get more money."

Of course, the hyperbolic aspect comes when my preferences actually shift. Now, as I've gotten closer to that date, now, it's a day before I can either get $200 tomorrow, I can get to $250 a month. I might switch and say, "You know what? I don't feel like waiting anymore now, I want the $200." The gist here is that, we may think that we'll be patient, and then when some tempting reward gets closer and closer to the present, our temptations take over, and we end up shifting our preferences, so much so that we prefer now over later.

You asked, how does this intersect? You can imagine how pernicious this problem can be, relationships between current and future selves. Where if I constantly tell myself, I'm going to be patient, I'm going to resist the bag of candy that I have in my pantry tonight. I'm going to resist spending a little bit more of dinner, whatever it may be. Then all of a sudden, I come face to face with that temptation, and I switch. Well, what's going to end up happening there is that I'm going to be constantly prioritizing my present self, and over time, constantly hurting my future self.

One other thing here that gets really tricky is that, any one of these decisions in isolation isn't going to ruin our lives. If I decide tonight, actually, I'm going to eat the whole bag of M&Ms. I'm not suddenly going to lose years of my life, I'm not suddenly going to have dietary health issues, whatever it is. But if I do that over, and over, and over again, that's when it adds up. It's really easy for us to make an exception out of the present and fail to see how all those individual decisions add up to sort of a bigger one.

That's exactly kind of where I want to go next. When people think about the future, how accurately do they tend to imagine it?

There's a variety of ways to think about this. When it comes to thinking about how well we'll be able to withstand temptations. Oftentimes, we're not all that accurate, because we fail to really fully appreciate the emotional polar, what economists have called visceral factors that will come into play. We're also not that accurate when it comes to thinking about just how our feelings will change over time. By the way, which sometimes works for us. We think that losing our jobs, or breaking up in a relationship is going to impact us to an extreme degree, and it will last forever, and it doesn't. Because we have these psychological immune systems that kick in, that make it a little easier to deal with stuff, bad stuff.

Can you explain the end-of-history illusion, and what impact does it have on future decisions?

The end-of-history illusion is one of my favourite psychological theories or findings. But in a nutshell, the end-of-history illusion, is the tendency for us to recognize that we've changed from who we were to who we are now. But to mistakenly think that we've somehow arrived now in such a way that our rate of progress will be slower over time. It's the tendency to think, now, I am who I am, and I won't change that much moving forward into the future. It's really kind of an ironic discovery. Because this whole conversation we've been having, it's about how people fail to relate to their future selves. Here's a case where we say, "Oh, I think I'll be really much the same now going forward."

On the surface, that may look like it's a conflict. In reality, it's another instance where we make life difficult for our future selves. Because we mistakenly think that our preferences won't change over time, we mistakenly think that the circumstances of our life will, more or less be similar from now to 10 years from now. The reason that that makes life difficult for us, is because we end up getting confronted with big surprises when life does change. We end up locking ourselves into decisions that perhaps we shouldn't have locked ourselves into. We ended up failing to recognize how some of the best-laid plans are ones that have more fluidity to them.

Dan Gilbert, who's one of the psychologists on that work is absolutely just a brilliant thinker. When I talked to him about this, he had said to me, in my 20s, I sort of recognized that I've changed from my teen years, in my 20s, and I sort of knew that I would change a bit more from my 20s to my 30s. But instead, I had this notion that like, once I hit my mid-30s and 40s, then I'd kind of – it's not coast per se, but I would more or less be the same person. He said, he was 64 when I was doing that interview with him, and he said, I've changed more from 54 to 64 than I did from 44 to 54, and I never could have anticipated that.

Wow, that's incredible. Thinking about the hyperbolic discounting thing, that's crazy. That's like, if someone has a reward one year or two years in the future, they'll correctly discount the rewards. But if it's a day, in the future, they'll get all messed up. Is that kind of right?

I would say kind of right. Because in reality, it's very hard to detect such clean preference reversals both in the lab, and in our daily lives. I literally called you and asked, do you want $200 in a month or $250 in two months? And you said, "Well, the $250 in months." Then a day before those time period, I called you again, "Would you really shift?" I don't know if I would see such a clean preference reversal. But if you think about it in a more abstract way, this is no different than you telling me that given the choice of a new car, in a year, I think I'd rather go for a slightly less fancy model. One that will be more frugal, if you will. But I'm not saying it's a super beat-up old car.

But then in a year, when you need the car, you're at the dealership, and you're faced with some added bells and whistles. Now, you may end up spending more than you had anticipated. We call that a clean preference reversal. Maybe not, but it's an instantiation. It's an example of hyperbolic discounting, where I had one set of plans, and then I switched as the thing came closer to me.

We've touched on a whole bunch of things that make it hard for us to think about our future selves, and act in a way that's beneficial to them. Can you talk about how viewing aged images of yourself increases that connection with your future self?

This is one of the potential solutions that my collaborators and I've tried over the years, which is to say, let's take a step back and start by trying to figure out “how do I make the connection between current and future selves stronger?”. If you play out this other person analogy, you can use that to try to get some insight into the things that might work. I know that if I want to get you to take better care of other people, if I want to get you to donate to a charity, I'm better off telling you a story about a charity recipient, making them vivid than giving you a paragraph with statistics, which is ironic. Because the paragraph of statistics has more information in it.

Over the years, what we've been trying to test out is whether or not making that future self more vivid, could also help with these sorts of decisions. One way to do that is to show somebody what they look like when they're older. I've tested this and lab studies where people are a little bit more likely to intend to save when we show them their older self. We've researched that – we've been working on for years, but it's finally coming out this June actually, where we did a field experiment where this was with 50,000 people. Some banking customers got exposure to these aged images, and some did not. The ones who were exposed were a little bit more likely to make a contribution to their long-term savings account.

Now, one thing to note here is, it's not like in any of these research studies, people are just shown an image, and then asked to go about their day. Then we suddenly find that they're saving more. Rather, what we've done is make sure that the context is set up right, so that I'm being exposed to these images at the same time as being able to have an opportunity to make a change. When it comes to any sort of intervention, there's so many pushes and pulls on our attention. That just a little subtle exposure is probably not going to be enough to move the needle.

What is it about images that connects us to our future self.

They're vivid, and vivid equals emotional and emotional equals –

Action.

I'd like to do something, action. But I think that also tells you something, which is that they've got to be vivid in the right way. One thing that I'm doing right now is trying to figure out who wants to see these images and who doesn't. If I don't want to see them, what would be a better way to get me to connect to my future self? I started doing this research 12, 13 years ago. Honestly, I'm starting to look more and more like those age-progressed images that I created then. Over time, I'm starting to wonder 20 years from now, am I going to want to see an older image? Or will I be better served with some other vivid example of my future self? Whether it's a story, whether it's a conversation, and so on.

One thing I'm working on right now with some folks from MIT Media Lab is, I got to warn you. It's going to sound a little hokey, but it's essentially an AI chatbot called Future You. I have to tell you, I was skeptical when I tried to use this. But what the team has done is they've created like any sort of chatbot interface that you call a conversational agent. It is meant to be your future self, and it's meant to respond to you as if it's your future self. I went in super skeptical, just to test it out. Thirty minutes went by before I sort of looked up and realized, "Oh my God, I've been in this conversation with future me."

Wow.

I've been doing this research forever, and it still really struck me. I mean, we're now in the process of actually testing this out and seeing how it impacts people. The part of what it did is just, it just made it so much more likely for me to put the brakes on all my current swirl of thoughts and try to think about who will I be, what will I be feeling, what am I thinking, what will I be doing in the future, and really try to converse with that person.

Did it impact you? Did it cause you to plan differently or think differently about your future self?

It's not that I left that and call my advisor and made a change to my portfolio. I've been doing this research for a while. It would almost be hypocritical for me to be unplanned when it comes to the future and sort of made the change. One thing that that experience, and to some extent the experience of writing the book did, but I think it was kind of crystallized in this interaction I had. One thing that it did do is change a bit of the way that I see how I spend my time, in particular, how I relate to my kids. I have always thought about current and future selves in the context of these classic examples of saving, and spending, and eating when exercising.

Those are really easy to point to, present versus future trade-offs. But there's also these elements of present versus future trade-offs that involve how you spend your time and what am I going to look back on and say, "I'm really glad that I did X rather than Y" or "Didn't do X rather than Y." I can point to sort of daily examples of this, but I'm happy to sort of elaborate on it. But that's been a particular case for that interaction of my future self, and that thinking has changed the way that I go about the sort of daily interactions I have with my kids, and who I spend my time with and how I spend it.

Man, it makes me think of Dan Pink, who I think wrote the foreword to your book. We've had him on, and we've talked, we've read his book, and done a bunch of stuff with his work on regret. It makes me think a lot of that where it's like, the regret lens lets you kind of think forward about what you might regret in the future. It sounds like this is getting to a similar general area.

I'll play that out even more, I think his recent book, The Power of Regret, it's so smart. One of the things that he highlights in there is these foundational regrets. He talks about there – I know he's been on your show. The tendency to have these regrets of things I could have done that would have essentially set me on a different life path. Those are really anxiety provoking to think about. He has this line in the book where he says, the old proverb, "The best time to plant a tree was 20 years ago, and the second-best time is right now." Yeah, we didn't do that thing then, but we can make a change now.

I think both my work and the perspective that he takes do coalesce around this idea of sort of, this mental time travel going into the future, and looking back, and saying, "What will I have been happy with and what not?" It doesn't mean that everything is perfect. There are times when it's like, I really should have chosen differently. I got too wrapped up in the moment, I see this in my own life with work and spending time on that and doing this trip. Where now, I'm sure you guys have a similar thing. Of course, other domains where that comes about as well. It's not like it's perfect, it's not like this has fixed everything. I think these sorts of mindsets move you a little bit more toward the decisions to do things more for now and later. That's probably a win.

It's a huge win. Can you talk more about how did the chatbot experience make you change the way you're thinking about that stuff?

I'll step back. I had a call about a year or two ago with someone I was working with on a project related to future sales. She said, "I had never thought about this before." She said, "You know how some people have a constant conversation with a deceased loved one. They're sort of always there, they're conversing with them." She said, "I have that with my future self." She said, "It's just like constantly there whenever I'm making big decisions, whenever I'm thinking about something, I'm sort of having a conversation with older Alex." I thought that was a story that was really interesting, but I didn't totally relate to because I didn't have that. For me, the conversation with a chatbot did a little bit of that. It's sort of injected this perspective that there is kind of this guy there that I – if I'm not talking to all the time, at least he's watching me.

Most recently, I'd say, this has played out in particular when I interact with my son. He's a toddler, he can be challenging at times, he's amazing at other times, and probably most other people have a toddler. I hope I'm not unique in this. Get frustrated, get impatient. There are times I have to sort of remember how will I look back on this. It still isn't fix, especially, you get really mad and in mode. But it's helped a little bit. But in fact, damping – talks about an example of a woman who really like lost her temper with her daughter for spilling a drink on her outfit before school on it. What was interesting about that, that particular case, and that she's always regretted it, but she's also never done it again. This is a great example of the regret but then turned into changing behaviour moving forward.

Really interesting. You're not alone getting frustrated with kids. Yes, kids are good at frustrating their parents, I think.

Yes, agreed.

That chatbot stuff was interesting. I think that whole digression getting into regret and Dan Pink stuff was great. Come back to the age-progressed images stuff, can you talk about some of the empirical findings you've had on what behaviours that has been able to impact?

We've looked at the impact of age progression on saving hypothetically. When I say hypothetically, I mean, almost imaginary decisions in a lab setting. There's no dollars and cents that are forked over, but just what I or wouldn't I. We've also looked at it with real contributions to retirement accounts. We've looked at it with regards to ethical behaviour. So showing someone age-progressive image makes them a little less likely to engage in unethical or delinquent behaviour. I'll caution, those aren't super strong effects. In part, these are, again, areas where there's lots of different inputs there.

My collaborator on that work has actually been – this is without me. He's been testing the use of age progression, images, and conversations with inmates in the Netherlands, looking what happens when you show these images and the likelihood to not reoffend later on. Other folks have looked at – it's like just a step below age progression, but like white, vivid mental visualizations with women in rural Kenya. Showing that these exercises increase the likelihood that they'll take better health choices for their children and also start saving more. I bring that up, because it's not age progression, per se. But I think under the hood, it's doing the same thing. To get back to Cameron's point, it's making that future self more vivid and emotional.

How well is the age-progressed image research replicated since you first started looking at it?

There hasn't been a ton on – that's like looked at the age progression, per se. In part, it's a pretty labour-intensive research endeavour. One study that I wasn't involved in, got community college students to interact with an age-progressed version of themselves. These are students who were in a semester-long financial education class. The students who interacted with these age-progressed images throughout the quarter, ended up being more committed and more involved in the class than those who didn't get these images.

You asked about replication, I would call this sort of a conceptual replication. It's not literally the same thing that we did before. But conceptually speaking, I think it's a further demonstration, that these images can be powerful. I, really moving forward want to examine, and I started talking about this earlier. But I want to examine heterogeneity with these interventions. In other words, everything we've looked at before is done one-size fits all. We just show everybody these images, but there must be people for whom the images aren't powerful. They maybe are scary or anxiety provoking. I'd like to know more about, who are those people. What is the consequence of seeing these images? Then on the flip side, who are the people that want to see the images and how best can we reach them? I think there's a lot more to be done in this space moving forward.

So you mentioned some of the lab work and some of the empirical work, are there real-world examples, like as any financial company taking this stuff and said, "We're going to use this to help people save more?"

Just yesterday, I got an article that ING over in Europe was doing sort of a Meet Future You AI campaign where it's not that I'm just exposed to my future self, I think this is so creative. I write in what do I want my future to look like, what would be an ideal day in retirement? For instance, one woman said, "Running in fields of flowers with my dogs." Boom, up comes this amazing picture of this woman. She takes her photo, and up comes this amazing photo of her aged, running through this beautiful field of flowers with two dogs in front of her and one dog behind her. It's amazing.

Now, this is not a rigorous empirical test. They said that enrollment in their retirement products increased 300% from Q1 2022 to Q1 2023. Well, of course, the researcher in me wants to know, how did other financial services firms fare in that same period, et cetera, et cetera. But it's a fascinating example of this. Other companies have tried it out too. Merrill Lynch had this face retirement campaign. This is about seven, eight years ago, where I would take a picture, and they would show me my age-progressed future self, and it would also show me sort of all sorts of details about the future. What will be the price of gas, and the price of eggs, and these sorts of vivid examples of costs in the future? That was a marketing exercise. It wasn't meant to be done to have people then start saving more.

Anecdotally, they told me it was one of their most successful marketing campaigns, and so much is getting people to the site. Does it translate over? is the next-level question. I can go on. Certainly, other firms have adopted these strategies.

I want to piggyback on that idea. How effective is writing to your future self-improving decisions?

I've been trying this out over the years too, where we don't just show people and images, but we have them write a letter to their future selves. What we've found is that if you have people write a letter to their future self, they're more likely to go exercise, they're more likely to express some ethical tendencies as part of some of the same research that I mentioned earlier. In ongoing work, we've had – it's a version of a letter writing task, where basically, people fill in the blanks, and then we spit these verbs and nouns back to them. It's kind of like a mad-libs. We find when people sort of read a letter from their future selves, they're more likely to enroll in an automatic savings plan.

More recent research has added an interesting wrinkle to this letter-writing work. Which is that, it may be better to write a letter to your future self, and then also write a reply letter from your future self. I really love this idea, because what it does is it truly forces you to step into the shoes of your future self and see the world through their eyes. This particular work I'm referencing has shown that people who do this sort of send and reply letters are more likely to experience a reduction of anxiety during stressful moments. That was a study that was done in mid-April 2020.

Other work has shown that the send and reply letters increases commitment to studying, and attending class, and these sorts of things. We have not yet looked at the actual sort of send and reply letter writing in financial services, except for the one study I just mentioned, where we kind of have people will fill in the blanks, and then to get a letter read back to them. I think what's promising about these sorts of interventions is that it forces people to, again, sort of grapple with the vividness and the reality of who they'll be in the future.

We've got the age-progressed image idea at the AI chatbot prototype thing, it's working, the pen pal writing back and forth. Are there any other interventions that can help people get closer to their future selves?

A lot of the other interventions that I'm excited about, and I talked about the book start with the perspective that there's a current self, and a future self, and that there's tension between them. But then, try to go about attacking the problem from a slightly different angle. For instance, this is something we just talked about. Tries to make that future self emotionally closer to our present selves. Other work basically says, let's try to make life easier for our current self, let's try to make the sacrifices feel easier to make. I hesitate to use that word, but almost a "trick ourselves" into doing things that will benefit ourselves later.

For instance, I have a paper I've worked on with Shlomo Benartzi and Steve Shu, where we ask people if they want to enroll in an automatic savings account. But we frame it either as a monthly bounce or daily amounts $5 a day or $150 a month. This is a really simple intervention. But psychologically, what it's doing is when I frame savings in terms of the daily amount, it feels a lot easier. I can give up five bucks a day, I can give up maybe 10 bucks a day. Obviously, there's going to be individual differences here. $150 a month, $200 hours a month, whatever it is, that feels a lot harder to do, because I have a difficult time pointing to other things I'd be willing to give up on that end.

What we found is that, that sort of reframing really does help people sign up. We're doing other versions of this right now, and we've asked people, rather than what percent of their paycheck they want to save, we say, for every dollar you make, would you consider saving one more penny? That's the same basic idea here, it makes that present sacrifice feel a little easier. So these are sort of reframing exercises. Then, the other big sort of class of strategies that we've explored is trying to get people to adopt what we call pre-commitment strategies. Adopt a strategy to make it harder for me to mess things up when the temptation arises.

What happens if we get too focused on improving life for our future self?

If you'd asked me that question 10 years ago, I would have said that this doesn't feel like a real problem. I think we need to really focus on the people who are under-saving or prioritizing the president over later. But you start to think about and you realize that there's a lot of instances where we do just this, researchers call it hyperopia, which I think is a fancy term for rather than being myopic, and focusing having tunnel vision for right now, you're hyperopic and you're focusing too much on the future.

Now, you can say, "Well, that doesn't sound that likely." But then I'd ask you to think about your own life and consider, when are the times that we do this. Some research has actually shown that there's this kind of interesting U-shaped curve when it comes to self-control and happiness. Where up to a certain point, having more self-control in your life is a really good thing for your life satisfaction and well-being. Then after a certain point, it actually starts to come back and hurt us. It's almost like being too constrained right now, will deprive our future selves from the ability to look back on any memories or any good experiences that can also give us utility later on.

Anecdotally, I've talked to financial advisors who say they have this problem, sometimes where they have clients who have spent their whole lives amassing savings, and then they get to the point where it's time to spend down and they're just not doing it. You can understand why. They've spent all this time getting there, and now it's time to spend, and they don't want to do it. It's like, "Well, what's the point? We can see this outside of the financial space." I hinted at time expenditures earlier, but it's easy to tell ourselves that I'm doing something for the future when I'm working really hard and neglecting other things in my life. It's easy to say, "Oh, you're family." But it also talked about friends in that regard too. Say, "Well, I'll always have time later on, to give my buddy a call. With more and more time that goes by, and that call becomes less and less likely to happen. Because now, it's like, rather than meeting 20 minutes to catch up, now, I need an hour. "Oh, I can't find an hour."

Then, before I know it, that relationship has started dissolving. That can be sort of another form of this case to maybe tell ourselves we're doing something for the for the future, and we're not really doing it.

How do you suggest that people balance that? We want to take care of our future selves, but we don't want to give up the present.

The other day, I was talking to somebody else about this. I always say just the word they use, balance. The word that came up in my conversation was actually harmony. I thought that was such a good way to think about it. Rather than trying to sort of balance – balance implies, I do something now, I do some later. It implies to some extent coexistence, where I can be doing things for now and later. I can make a decision right now, that will be better for me later. We keep talking about this. It’s like, I can decide to spend less right now that is going to benefit me later. I can also try to recognize how it'll benefit me later and get some utility out of that right now.

I can also make the decision to spend more right now on something, an experience or a material purchase that for some reason feels like I needed. But if I can do that, and recognize, maybe I'll get some benefit from that later on. Maybe that's not the worst thing. I think that the problem arises when we're just too often focused on one or the other.

This came up earlier this year, my sister-in-law and brother-in-law wanted to go on vacation with the kids. I started to say, I'm fortunate enough to have had this as an option to go on vacation. But I talked with my wife, I say, "Do we need to do it? Maybe it might be better to stay home and take care of some stuff. It will obviously won't cost as much to just stay home." Ultimately, we decided to go and in doing so, both of us were trying to recognize, this is going to provide some experiences now, but also some memories for the kids later. In a way, I can say, you know what, that's not problematic. I think the problem would come is, every single time we're given the opportunity to do something like this, you say yes. Because then, if I keep telling myself, "Well, I'm doing it for later. I'm doing it for later. I'm doing it for later." Before I know it, I'm going to be in debt, and I am going to have screwed over my future self.

Do you think, Hal, that COVID had any effect on our collective relationship with the future?

I really do. We can't be having this conversation now and not think about that. I don't know empirically how it's changed our relationship with our future selves, because research hasn't been done yet. There has been some other research that's suggestive of the idea that COVID might reorient us, or the experience of the pandemic may have reoriented us toward thinking more deeply about what's valuable to us, and where we want our priorities to be. That I think could be the mechanism through which our relationships with our future selves might change a little bit too. I don't think this is abstract. You think about the great resignation, you think about people leaving the workforce, or changing careers. Some people had the luxury of making a decision, some people had a decision forced upon them. But in many of the cases, anecdotally, what you hear is people sort of saying, "It was the first time I had sort of a clean break that made me think do I want to be spending my time this way or not?"

In that way, I think that the whole experience could have changed, and may continue to change this current future self-relationship. I think one of the interesting questions will be, how long are those effects last? Have we already started to move away from them? There's a strong desire to get back to some more stable place. Of course, that's understandable. With that may come less thinking about those big internal values and those questions that may have changed over the experience of the pandemic.

Final question for you, Hal. What impact are you hoping that your book will have on people?

It's not that I want people to read this and suddenly save more, or eat healthier, or something like that. That feels too basic. Really, the impact I wanted to have is, I wanted to prompt people to have more intentional conversations with their future selves. So that they don't arrive at some later point in time regretting the things that they've done, but rather have gotten there in a more direct way and more purposeful way where they've really thought about the impact of now and later. And had sort of a clear conversation and an ongoing conversation about those trade-offs, and those balancing acts, and those abilities to sort of harmonize or not.

Well, thanks for joining us, Hal. Again, awesome book. People should go buy it. I know you're too nice to do the call to action. I'll recommend people go and pick it up. So, thanks for joining us, Hal.

Thanks, Cameron. Thanks, Ben. I really appreciate you guys having me on here. It's great conversation.

Awesome. Like Cameron said, the book is great. I mentioned before we started recording that my eight-year-old son was curious about it, when I was reading it to prepare for this conversation. I gave it to him afterwards. Then, the next day, I saw him writing on a piece of paper and I was like, "What are you doing?"

I love that.

He said he's writing a note to his future self like the book said. But this is with kids. I mean, you recognize with young kids, Hal, and Cameron, you too. Try to get that message across to kids that the things that you do now when you're young, but they compound over time. That's not an easy message to get across.

Yeah, it's a really difficult concept. To some extent, they're not quite wired yet to think that way. But this is one of the spaces we're modelling really works. If I show that, maybe I hope it sticks.

Very cool.

But we'll see.

Before we let you go, Hal. With you here today, we wanted to announce to our listeners that we're going to be recording a live Rational Reminder episode at this September's Future Proof Conference, and Hal's going to be our guest.

Yes, Future Proof. As you know, Hal, you were there last year for a bit. I saw you there. But this outdoor conference, unlike any other conference, it's not your typical boardroom conference, or ballroom conference. It's literally next to the beach in Huntington Beach. It's pretty crazy, pretty unique. And we're actually going to be recording live in front of an audience next to the beach. With you, Hal, it's going to be awesome.

Yes, I can't wait. I think it's going to be a really cool conversation to have together live like that.

Definitely. We thought you'd be a great guest, because you've been a great guest twice on our podcast. But you're also working on a really cool project related to financial decision-making, which is what we're going to cover in that live recording.

I've got a couple of collaborators. One of the things we're doing right now, it's been about give or take 20 plus years since researchers in psychology, and in marketing, and business schools have really focused or focusing on consumer financial decision-making. Part of what we've been doing is going through all of the research that's been done the last 20 years and saying like, "Well, what do we know now? What don't we know? Where has the focus been and where does the focus need to be?"

This isn't really just an academic exercise, but a lot of what business school academics do it. I hesitate to say that. That sounds a little bit dry. But a lot of what business school academics do is try to do things that are interesting, and impactful, and practically useful for people in the industry. I think a lot of the folks that we speak to are folks in the financial services industry. There's still a gap between what we're doing in the research world, and what's being done in the practitioner world. We're hoping that we can get some insights here from this overview that we're doing to say, "Where can we change some of our focus and where can we also start trying to translate some of what's known in a way that can help advisors to help clients?"

Incredible.

It's always the perfect topic for the events. So if you're there, come check us out. If you're looking for conference to attend this fall, check out Future Proof, is in Huntington Beach in early September. Thanks, Hal.

All right, guys. Thank you.

Is there an error in the transcript? Let us know! Email us at info@rationalreminder.ca.

Be sure to add the episode number for reference.