The psychology of your future self

By Jack Johnson

生命的每個階段，我們都會做出一些決定，這些決定會深刻影響我們未來的生活。當(dāng)我們成為未來的自己時，我們可能會對這些決定后悔。這是為什么呢？

Now,I think one of the reasons—I’ll try to convince you today—is that we have a fundamental misconception about the power of time.Everyone of you knows that the rate of change slows over the human lifespan,that your children seem to change by the minute but your parents seem to change by the year.But what is the name of this magical point in life where change suddenly goes from a gallop to a crawl?Is it teenage years?Is it middle age?Is it old age?The answer,it turns out,for most people,is now,whatever now happens to be.What I want to convince you today is that all of us are walking around with an illusion,an illusion that history,our personal history,has just come to an end,that we have just recently become the people that we were always meant to be and will be for the rest of our lives.

At every stage of our lives we make decisions that will profoundly influence the lives of the people we’re going to become,and then when we become those people,we’re not always thrilled with the decisions we made.So young people pay good money to get tattoos removed that teenagers paid good money to get.Middle-aged people rushed to divorce people who young adults rushed to marry.Older adults work hard to lose what middle-aged adults worked hard to gain.On and on and on.The question is,as a psy-chologist,that fascinates me is,why do we make decisions that our future selves so often regret?

Let me give you some data to back up that claim.So here’s a study of change in people’s personal values over time.Here’s three values.Everybody here holds all of them,but you probably know that as you grow,as you age,the balance of these values shifts.So how does it do so?Well,we asked thousands of people.We asked half of them to predict for us how much their values would change in the next 10 years,and the others to tell us how much their values had changed in the last 10 years.And this enabled us to do a really interesting kind of analysis,because it allowed us to compare the predictions of people,say,18 years old,to the reports of people who were 28,and to do that kind of analysis throughout the lifespan.

Here’s what we found.First of all,you are right,change does slow down as we age,but second,you’re wrong,because it doesn’t slow nearly as much as we think.At every age,from 18 to 68 in our data set,people vastly underestimated how much change they would experience over the next 10 years.We call this the “end of history” illusion.To give you an idea of the magnitude of this effect,you can connect these two lines,and what you see here is that 18-year-olds anticipate changing only as much as 50-year-olds actually do.

Now it’s not just values.It’s all sorts of other things.For example,personality.Many of you know that psychologists now claim that there are five fundamental dimensions of personality:neuroticism,openness to experience,agreeableness,extraversion,and conscientiousness.Again,we asked people how much they expected to change over the next 10 years,and also how much they had changed over the last 10 years,and what we found,well,you’re going to get used to seeing this diagram over and over，because once again the rate of change does slow as we age,but at every age,people underestimate how much their personalities will change in the next decade.

And it isn’t just ephemeral things like values and personality.You can ask people about their likes and dislikes,their basic preferences.For example,name of your best friend,your favorite kind of vacation,what’s your favorite hobby,what’s your favorite kind of music.people can name these thing.We ask half of them to tell us,“Do you think that that will change over the next 10 years?” and half of them to tell us,“Did that change over the last 10 years?” And what we find,well,you’ve seen it twice now,and here it is again:people predict that the friend they have now is the friend they’ll have in 10 years,the vacation they most enjoy now is the one they’ll enjoy in 10 years,and yet,people who are 10 years older all say,“Eh,you know,that’s really changed.”

Does any of this matter?Is this just a form of mis-prediction that doesn’t have consequences?No,it matters quite a bit,and I’ll give you an example of why.It devils our decision-making in important ways.Bring to mind right now for yourself your favorite musician today and your favorite musician 10 years ago.I put mine up on the screen to help you along.Now we asked people to predict for us,to tell us how much money they would pay right now to see their current favorite musician perform in concert 10 years from now,and on average,people said they would pay 129 dollars for that ticket.And yet,when we asked them how much they would pay to see the person who was their favorite 10 years ago perform today,they say only 80 dollars.Now,in a perfectly rational world,these should be the same number,but we overpay for the opportunity to indulge our current preferences because we overestimate their stability.

Why does this happen?We’re not entirely sure,but it probably has to do with the ease of remembering versus the difficulty of imagining.Most of us can remember who we were 10 years ago,but we find it hard to imagine who we’re going to be， and then we mistakenly think that because it’s hard to imagine,it’s not likely to happen.Sorry， when people say “I can’t imagine that”,they’re usually talking about their own lack of imagination，and not about the unlikelihood of the event that they’re describing.

The bottom line is,time is a powerful force.It transforms our preferences.It reshapes our values.It alters our personalities.We seem to appreciate this fact,but only in retrospect.Only when we look backwards do we realize how much change happens in a decade.It’s as if,foremost of us， the present is a magic time.It’s a watershed on the timeline.It’s the moment at which we finally become ourselves.Human beings are works in progress that mistakenly think they’re finished.The person you are right now is as transient,as fleeting and as temporary as all the people you’ve ever been.The one constant in our life is change.

我認(rèn)為其中一個原因——也是我今天想說服你們的——就是我們對時間的力量有個基本的錯誤概念。你們每個人都知道變化的速度隨著人的年齡增長不斷放慢，孩子們好像每分鐘都有變化，而父母們的變化則要慢得多。那么生命中這個讓變化突然間從飛速變得緩慢的神奇轉(zhuǎn)折點應(yīng)該叫什么呢?是青少年時期嗎?是中年時期嗎?是老年階段嗎?其實對大多數(shù)人來說，答案是現(xiàn)在，無論現(xiàn)在發(fā)生著什么。今天我想讓大家明白的是，我們所有人都在圍繞著一種錯覺生活，這種錯覺就是，我們每個人的過去，都已經(jīng)結(jié)束了，我們已經(jīng)成為了我們應(yīng)該成為的那種人，在余下的生命中也都會如此。在我們生命的每個階段，我們都會做出一些決定，這些決定會深刻影響我們未來的生活。當(dāng)我們成為未來的自己時，我們并不總是對過去做過的決定感到高興。所以年輕人花很多錢洗去當(dāng)還是青少年時花了很多錢做的文身；中年人急著跟年輕時迫不及待想結(jié)婚的人離婚；老年人很努力地?fù)]霍著作為中年人時不停工作所賺的錢。如此沒完沒了。作為一個心理學(xué)家，讓我感興趣的問題是：為什么我們會做出讓自己將來常常后悔的決定?我想給你們展示一些數(shù)據(jù)來支持這個觀點。這是一項關(guān)于人們的個人價值觀隨時間變化的研究。這里有三種價值觀。每個人的生活都與這三個價值觀相關(guān)，但是你們可能知道，隨著你們慢慢長大、變老，這三個價值觀的平衡點會不斷變化。 到底是怎么回事呢?我們詢問了數(shù)千人。我們讓他們當(dāng)中一半的人預(yù)測了一下在未來十年中，他們的價值觀會發(fā)生多大的改變，讓另一半人告訴我們，在過去的十年中，他們的價值觀發(fā)生了多大的變化。這項調(diào)查可以讓我們做一個很有趣的分析，因為它可以讓我們將大約18歲左右的人的預(yù)測同大約28歲左右的人的答案相比較，這項分析可以貫穿人的一生。

這是我們的發(fā)現(xiàn)。首先，你們是對的，隨著我們年齡的增長，變化會減緩。第二，你們錯了，因為這種變化并不像我們想象的那么慢。在我們的數(shù)據(jù)庫從18歲到68歲的每一個年齡段中，人們大大地低估了在未來的十年他們會經(jīng)歷多少變化。我們把這叫做“歷史終止”錯覺。為了讓你們了解這種影響有多大，你們可以把這兩條線連接起來，你們現(xiàn)在看到的是18歲的人群預(yù)期的改變僅僅和50歲的人群實際經(jīng)歷的一樣。

現(xiàn)在不僅僅是價值觀了。其他的方面都也有變化。比如說，人格。 你們當(dāng)中的很多人知道現(xiàn)在心理學(xué)家們認(rèn)為人格可以分為五個基本維度：神經(jīng)質(zhì)性。經(jīng)驗汲取度。協(xié)調(diào)性。外向性和道德感?；氐皆瓉淼脑掝}，我們問人們他們期待未來的十年中自己會有多大的變化，以及他們在過去的十年中發(fā)生了多少變化，我們發(fā)現(xiàn)了，你們會習(xí)慣不斷地看到這個圖表，因為又一次，變化速率隨著我們的年齡增長減慢了。但是在每一個年齡階段，人們都低估了在未來的十年中他們的人格會發(fā)生多大的改變。

而且不光是像價值觀和人格這樣的臨時性的特質(zhì)。你們可以問問人們關(guān)于他們喜好和厭惡的事，他們基本的偏好。比如說，說出你最好朋友的名字，你最喜歡什么樣的假期，你最大的愛好是什么，你最喜歡什么樣的音樂。人們可以說出這些事情。 我們讓他們當(dāng)中的一半人告訴我們，“你認(rèn)為這在未來十年內(nèi)會改變嗎?”讓另一半告訴我們， “這個在過去十年內(nèi)變化了嗎?”我們的發(fā)現(xiàn)是，嗯，這個圖你們已經(jīng)看過二次了，再展示一次：人們推測他們現(xiàn)在的朋友在未來十年中還會是他們的朋友，他們喜歡的度假之地在未來十年內(nèi)還會是他們喜歡的地方，然而，年長十歲的人都會說：“嗯，你知道，這確實不一樣了?！?/p>

這有什么關(guān)系嗎?這只是一種并不會有什么后果的錯誤的預(yù)測嗎?不，這有很大的關(guān)系，我會舉例告訴你們?yōu)槭裁?。它在很多重要的方面困擾著我們做決定?，F(xiàn)在想想你們此時此刻最喜歡的音樂人，還有十年前你們最喜歡的音樂人。我把我的答案放在大屏幕上作為提示?，F(xiàn)在我們讓人們預(yù)測一下，告訴我們他們現(xiàn)在愿意付多少錢來參加他們現(xiàn)在最喜歡的音樂人從現(xiàn)在起十年后的音樂會，平均來講，人們會說他們會付 129美元買票。然而，當(dāng)我們問他們愿意付多少錢去看他們十年前喜歡的人現(xiàn)在的演出，他們說只有80美元。那么，在一個完全理性的世界里，這兩個數(shù)字應(yīng)該是相同的，但是我們?yōu)槌两诋?dāng)前喜好中的機(jī)會付了更多的錢，因為我們高估了它們的持久性。

為什么會發(fā)生這樣的變化呢?我們也不是很確定，不過這可能與記憶的消逝和想象的難度相關(guān)。我們中的大多數(shù)人都能記得十年前的我們是什么樣子，但是要想象我們會成為什么樣的人就困難了，然后我們會錯誤地認(rèn)為因為很難想象，就不太可能會發(fā)生。很遺憾，當(dāng)人們說“我可想象不出來”，他們通常是在表達(dá)他們?nèi)狈ο胂罅?，而不是他們所描述的不可能發(fā)生的事情。

總而言之，時間是一種強大的力量。 它改變了我們的喜好。它重塑了我們的價值觀。 它改變了我們的人格。我們似乎會感激這個事實，但是只在回想過去的時候。只有在我們回首過去的時候我們才會認(rèn)識到在過去的十年里發(fā)生了多么大的變化。好像，對我們大多數(shù)人來說，當(dāng)前是個有魔力的時刻。它是時間軸上的分水嶺。它是一個使我們最終成為我們自己的時刻。人類還處在發(fā)展變化的過程中，卻錯誤地以為他們不會發(fā)生任何改變了?，F(xiàn)在的你只是處于過渡中，轉(zhuǎn)瞬即逝，暫時的狀態(tài)而已，就像所有那些過去的你。在我們的生命中唯一不變的就是變化。