To explore the neural basis of the self mainly relies on the researches of self-reference process. It refers to the cooperation of various regions of cortical midline structures (CMS), or even the whole brain. In self-reference process, medial prefrontal cortex (MPFC) and its sub regions play important role: ventral-MPFC activates stronger when self in default mode, self awareness and on-line self are activated; however, dorsal-MPFC involves more when conscious self, self evolution and agentic self are activated. In self-other representation, activities of MPFC and its sub regions are modulated by the affective, cognitive and cultural factors. It the future directions to put self in the dynamic temporal or interpersonal background to explore its neural mechanism.

Abstract Objective : This research examined the function of future self-continuity and its potential downstream consequences for academic performance through relations with other temporal psychological factors and self-control. We also addressed the influence of cultural factors by testing whether these relations differed by college generation status. Method : Undergraduate students enrolled at a large public university participated in two studies (Study 1: N = 119, M age = 20.55, 56.4% women; Study 2: N = 403, M age = 19.83, 58.3% women) in which they completed measures of temporal psychological factors and psychological resources. In Study 2, we also obtained academic records to link responses to academic performance. Results : Future self-continuity predicted subsequent academic performance and was related positively to future focus, negatively to present focus, and positively to self-control. Additionally, the relation between future focus and self-control was stronger for continuing-generation college students than first-generation college students. Conclusions : Future self-continuity plays a pivotal role in academic contexts. Findings suggest that it may have positive downstream consequences on academic achievement by directing attention away from the present and toward the future, which promotes self-control. Further, the strategy of focusing on the future may be effective in promoting self-control only for certain cultural groups. This article is protected by copyright. All rights reserved.

In 2 studies, the Inclusion of Other in the Self (IOS) Scale, a single-item, pictorial measure of closeness, demonstrated alternate-form and test-retest reliability; convergent validity with the Relationship Closeness Inventory (Berscheid, Snyder, & Omoto, 1989), the Sternberg (1988) Intimacy Scale, and other measures; discriminant validity; minimal social desirability correlations; and predictive validity for whether romantic relationships were intact 3 months later

People tend to attach less value to a good if they know a delay will occur before they obtain it. For example, people value receiving $100 tomorrow more than re

How does the anticipated connectedness between one’s current and future identity help explain impatience in intertemporal preferences? The less consumers are closely connected psychologically to their future selves, the less willing they will be to forgo immediate benefits in order to ensure larger deferred benefits to be received by that future self. When consumers’ measured or manipulated sense of continuity with their future selves is lower, they accept smaller-sooner rewards, wait less in order to save money on a purchase, require a larger premium to delay receiving a gift card, and have lower long-term discount rates.

Reducing spending in the present requires the combination of being both motivated to provide for one’s future self (valuing the future) and actively considering long-term implications of one’s choices (awareness of the future). Feeling more connected to the future self—thinking that the important psychological properties that define your current self are preserved in the person you will be in the future—helps motivate consumers to make far-sighted choices by changing their valuation of future outcomes (e.g., discount factors). However, this change only reduces spending when opportunity costs are considered. Correspondingly, cues that highlight opportunity costs reduce spending primarily when people discount the future less or are more connected to their future selves. Implications for the efficacy of behavioral interventions and for research on time discounting are discussed.

61We tested if future self-continuity predicted lower procrastination.61We tested if mental imagery and Positive Affect predicted future self-continuity.61Future self-continuity can benefit from a broadened cognitive-affective scope.61Future self-continuity can be helpful for temporal decision-making.

Abstract This research examined how mental imagery practice can increase future self-continuity to reduce procrastination. A total of 193 undergraduate students were randomly assigned to a present-focused meditation or to a future self-focused mental imagery condition. Participants in both conditions were asked to listen to their respective audio recording twice per week for four consecutive weeks and to complete a pre-intervention, half-point, and post-intervention questionnaire. At the four-week mark, hierarchical regression analyses revealed that both future self-continuity and empathic perspective taking were significantly higher for the mental imagery condition than the meditation condition. While vividness of future self moderated change in future self-continuity, affective empathy for future self mediated the relation between vividness of future self and future self-continuity. Lastly, only empathic perspective taking was a significant moderator of change in procrastination across time. The influence of empathy and future self-continuity on procrastination is discussed.

A developmental account is given of the role of self-continuity in insulating adolescents against the risks of suicide.

The cross-cultural program of research presented here is about matters of temporal persistence--personal persistence and cultural persistence--and about solution strategies for solving the paradox of "sameness-in-change." The crux of this paradox resides in the fact that, on threat of otherwise ceasing to be recognizable as a self, all of us must satisfy at least two constitutive conditions. The first of these is that selves are obliged to keep moving or die, and, so, must continually change. The second is that selves must also somehow remain the same, lest all notions of moral responsibility and any commitment to an as yet unrealized future become nonsensical. Although long understood as a problem demanding the attention of philosophers, we argue that this same paradox arises in the ordinary course of identity development and dictates the different developmental routes taken by culturally mainstream and Aboriginal youth in coming to the identity-preserving conclusion that they and others are somehow continuous through time. Findings from a set of five studies are presented. The first and second studies document the development and refinement of a method for parsing and coding what young people say on the topic of personal persistence or self-continuity. Both studies demonstrate that it is not only possible to seriously engage children as young as age 9 or 10 years in detailed and codable discussions about personal persistence, but that their reasoning concerning such matters typically proceeds in an orderly and increasingly sophisticated manner over the course of their early identity development. Our third study underscores the high personal costs of failing to sustain a workable sense of personal persistence by showing that failures to warrant self-continuity are strongly associated with increased suicide risk in adolescence. Study four documents this same relation between continuity and suicide, this time at the macrolevel of whole cultures, and shows that efforts by Aboriginal groups to preserve and promote their culture are associated with dramatic reductions in rates of youth suicide. In the final study we show that different default strategies for resolving the paradox of personal persistence and change--Narrative and Essentialist strategies--distinctly characterize Aboriginal and non-Aboriginal youth.

The act of projecting oneself into meaningful future events may significantly contribute to a person's sense of self and identity. Yet if the role of memories, in particular self-defining memories (SDMs), in grounding the self is now well established, the identity function of anticipated future events has received comparatively little attention. This article introduces the construct of self-defining future projection (SDFP) to address this issue. Two studies show that people can readily identify significant future events that they frequently think about and that convey core information about who they are as individuals. Furthermore, a person's particular style of constructing SDMs is similarly manifested in SDFPs, suggesting that both types of events can be used to ground the self. Notably, people who display a stronger tendency to extract meaning from their past experiences also reflect more about the potential implications of imagined future events. The results further demonstrate that SDMs and SDFPs both give rise to a strong sense of personal continuity over time and are meaningfully related to self-esteem. Together these findings lend support to the idea that a person's sense of self and identity is in part nourished by the anticipation of significant future events.

Recent functional neuroimaging studies have shown that reflecting on representations of the present self versus temporally distant selves is associated with higher activity in the medial prefrontal cortex (MPFC). In the current fMRI study, we investigated whether this effect of temporal perspective is symmetrical between the past and future. The main results revealed that the MPFC showed higher activity when reflecting on the present self than when reflecting on past and future selves, with no difference between past and future selves. Temporal perspective also modulated activity in the right inferior parietal cortex but in the opposite direction, activity in this brain region being higher when reflecting on past and future selves relative to the present self (with again no difference between past and future selves). These findings show that differences in brain activity when thinking about current versus temporally distant selves are symmetrical between the past and the future. It is suggested that by processing degrees of self-relatedness, the MPFC might sustain the process of identifying oneself with current representations of the self, whereas the right inferior parietal cortex might be involved in distinguishing the present self from temporally distant selves.

fMRI ; medial prefrontal cortex ; time ; self

An implicit association test (IAT) measures differential association of 2 target concepts with an attribute. The 2 concepts appear in a 2-choice task (2-choice task (e.g., flower vs. insect names), and the attribute in a 2nd task (e.g., pleasant vs. unpleasant words for an evaluation attribute). When instructions oblige highly associated categories (e.g., flower + pleasant) to share a response key, performance is faster than when less associated categories (e.g., insect & pleasant) share a key. This performance difference implicitly measures differential association of the 2 concepts with the attribute. In 3 experiments, the IAT was sensitive to (a) near-universal evaluative differences (e.g., flower vs. insect), (b) expected individual differences in evaluative associations (Japanese + pleasant vs. Korean + pleasant for Japanese vs. Korean subjects), and (c) consciously disavowed evaluative differences (Black + pleasant vs. White + pleasant for self-described unprejudiced White subjects).

Children's and adolescents' projections of the self into the future and memories of the self in the past were compared with their current self-conceptions. In Study 1, 82 children and adolescents between the ages of 4 and 15 were asked to describe themselves and to describe themselves as they thought they would be in five years. The results indicated that, at all ages, subjects were more likely to think of their current selves than their future selves in terms of typical activities, personality characteristics and preferences. The future self was more likely to be described in terms of social relationships than the current self. In Study 2, perceptions of change and continuity in the self were examined by asking 88 children and adolescents between the ages of 9 and 18 to describe themselves as they were two and four years in the past, as they are now, and as they will be two and four years in the future. Subjects also estimated the similarity between their present selves and their past and future selves. Similarity between the present self and future selves was perceived to be higher than between past and present selves. Children and adolescents assert that with time they become more capable and physically attractive, develop better personalities and mature intellectually and emotionally, while simultaneously shedding undesirable personality, cognitive and emotional characteristics. The results are discussed in terms of their implications for personal narratives and social cognitive approaches to personality.

With life expectancy dramatically increasing throughout much of the world, people have to make choices with a longer future in mind than they ever had to before. Yet, many indicators suggest that undersaving for the long term often occurs: in America, for instance, many individuals will not be able to maintain their preretirement standard of living in retirement. Previous research has tried to understand problems with intertemporal choice by focusing on the ways in which people treat present and future rewards. In this paper, the author reviews a burgeoning body of theoretical and empirical work that takes a different viewpoint, one that focuses on how perceptions of the self over time can dramatically affect decision making. Specifically, when the future self shares similarities with the present self, when it is viewed in vivid and realistic terms, and when it is seen in a positive light, people are more willing to make choices today that may benefit them at some point in the years to come.

Some people find it more difficult to delay rewards than others. In three experiments, we tested a "future self-continuity" hypothesis that individual differences in the perception of one's present self as continuous with a future self would be associated with measures of saving in the laboratory and everyday life. Higher future self-continuity (assessed by a novel index) predicted reduced discounting of future rewards in a laboratory task, more matches in adjectival descriptions of present and future selves, and greater lifetime accumulation of financial assets (even after controlling for age and education). In addition to demonstrating the reliability and validity of the future self-continuity index, these findings are consistent with the notion that increased future self-continuity might promote saving for the future.

Many people fail to save what they need to for retirement (Munnell, Webb, and Golub-Sass 2009). Research on excessive discounting of the future suggests that removing the lure of immediate rewards by pre-committing to decisions, or elaborating the value of future rewards can both make decisions more future-oriented. In this article, we explore a third and complementary route, one that deals not with present and future rewards, but with present and future selves. In line with thinkers who have suggested that people may fail, through a lack of belief or imagination, to identify with their future selves (Parfit 1971; Schelling 1984), we propose that allowing people to interact with age-progressed renderings of themselves will cause them to allocate more resources toward the future. In four studies, participants interacted with realistic computer renderings of their future selves using immersive virtual reality hardware and interactive decision aids. In all cases, those who interacted with virtual future selves exhibited an increased tendency to accept later monetary rewards over immediate ones.

Despite increases in the human life span, people have not increased their rate of saving. In a phenomenon known as 'temporal discounting', people value immediate gains over future gains. According to a future self-continuity hypothesis, individuals perceive and treat the future self differently from the present self, and so might fail to save for their future. Neuroimaging offers a novel means of testing this hypothesis, since previous research indicates that self- vs other-judgments elicit activation in the rostral anterior cingulate (rACC). Using event-related functional magnetic resonance imaging, we predicted and found not only individual differences in rACC activation while rating the current vs future self, but also that individual differences in current vs future self activation predicted temporal discounting assessed behaviorally a week after scanning. In addition to supporting the future self-continuity hypothesis, these findings hold implications for significant financial decisions, such as choosing whether to save for the future or spend in the present.

Decision makers generally feel disconnected from their future selves, an experience that leads them to prefer smaller immediate gains to larger future gains. This pervasive tendency is known as temporal discounting, and researchers across disciplines are interested in understanding how to overcome it. Following recent advances in the power literature, we suggest that the experience of power enhances one's connection with the future self, which in turn results in reduced temporal discounting. In Study 1, we found that participants assigned to high-power roles were less likely than participants assigned to low-power roles to display temporal discounting. In Studies 2 and 3, priming power reduced temporal discounting in monetary and nonmonetary tasks, and, further, connection with the future self mediated the relation between power and reduced discounting. In Study 4, experiencing a general sense of power in the workplace predicted actual lifetime savings. These results have important implications for future research.

No abstract is available for this item.

Psychotherapies are distinguished from other forms of symbolic healing by their emphasis on explicit talk about the self. Every system of psychotherapy thus depends on implicit models of the self, which in turn, are based on cultural concepts of the person. The cultural concept of the person that underwrites most forms of psychotherapy is based on Euro-American values of individualism. This individualistic and egocentric concept of the person can be contrasted with more sociocentric, ecocentric or cosmocentric views, which understand the person in relation to the social world, the environment, and the cosmos. Intercultural psychotherapy must consider the cultural concept of the person implicit in therapeutic discourse and practice to determine how well it fits or conflicts with the concepts, values and way of life of the patient.

Klineberg SL.

People assume they should attend to the present; their future self can handle the future. This seemingly plausible rule of thumb can lead people astray, in part because some future events require current action. In order for the future to energize and motivate current action, it must feel imminent. To create this sense of imminence, we manipulated time metric-the units (e.g., days, years) in which time is considered. People interpret accessible time metrics in two ways: If preparation for the future is under way (Studies 1 and 2), people interpret metrics as implying when a future event will occur. If preparation is not under way (Studies 3-5), they interpret metrics as implying when preparation should start (e.g., planning to start saving 4 times sooner for a retirement in 10,950 days instead of 30 years). Time metrics mattered not because they changed how distal or important future events felt (Study 6), but because they changed how connected and congruent their current and future selves felt (Study 7).

Abstract To investigate perceptual and neural correlates of future self-appraisals as a function of temporal distance, event-related potentials (ERPs) were recorded while participants (11 women, eight men) made judgments about the applicability of trait adjectives to their near future selves (i.e., one month from now) and their distant future selves (i.e., three years from now). Behavioral results indicated people used fewer positive adjectives, more negative adjectives, recalled more specific events coming to mind and felt more psychologically connected to the near future self than the distant future self. Electrophysiological results demonstrated that negative trait adjectives elicited more positive ERP deflections than did positive trait adjectives in the interval between 550 and 800 ms (late positive component) within the near future self condition. However, within the same interval, there were no significant differences between negative and positive traits adjectives in the distant future self condition. The results suggest that negative emotional processing in future self-appraisals is modulated by temporal distance, consistent with predictions of construal level theory.

It is suggested that perceptions of the self, of others, and of the relationship between self and others are very powerful and that this influence is clearly reflected in culture. The independent view of the self, represented in Western culture, is contrasted with the interdependent view in many other cultures. (SLD)

Abstract Policymakers and institutions have developed an increasing interest in applying principles from cognitive science to encourage individuals to adopt behaviors, attitudes and perspectives that enable them to reach higher levels of personal and collective well-being. We focused on the value of nudging people to adopt a broader farsighted view when making their day-to-day decisions, overcoming the temporal discounting bias which leads them to prefer smaller immediate gains to larger future rewards. Following recent advances in the literature, we tried to mitigate this myopia promoting the connection that individuals feel between their present and future selves through a nudge which capitalizes on their natural tendency to illusory superiority. We defined and tested a paradigm to exploit persuasively this optimistic bias to mitigate temporal discounting through the mediation of an increased future self-continuity. Implications for well-being and public policies are discussed.

Procrastinationis a pervasive self-regulatory failure affecting approximately one-fifth of theadult population and half of the student population. It is defined as one voluntarily delay of an intended course of action despite being worse off as aresult of that delay. Procrastination has a negative impact on performance andis associated with poorer mental health. Stress, worry, and feelings of guiltare common among those who procrastinate recurrently. In addition,procrastination is associated with fewer mental health-seeking behaviors andincreased treatment delay, leading to greater distress and the exacerbation ofillness. The current paper seeks to provide a theoretical and clinicalunderstanding of procrastination by reviewing prior research. Procrastinationcan be understood using different motivational theories, learning theory,self-efficacy theory, as well as biases and heuristics. Temporal motivationaltheory is proposed as an integrated explanation for procrastination, consistingof the interaction of four different variables: expectancy, value,impulsiveness, and time, each of which affects the tendency to procrastinate. Ageneral implication is that procrastination should be regarded as anidiosyncratic behavioral problem that requires a cognitive caseconceptualization or a functional analysis in order to guide therapists intheir work. A number of treatment interventions might be used in relation toprocrastination or example, efficacy performance spirals, automaticity,stimulus control, stimulus cues, learned industriousness, and cognitiverestructuring. Furthermore, the current paper explores the evidence on usingcognitive behavior therapy for procrastination, discussing the scarcity ofrandomized controlled trials and the lack of validated outcome measures, and highlightingthe need for further research.

Hindsight bias occurs when individuals believe that events were more predictable after they have occurred than they actually were before they occurred. Although hindsight bias is a well-studied phenomenon, few studies have examined the role of expertise in this bias. Two experiments investigated the relation between the magnitude of hindsight bias and self-reported poker expertise (Experiment... [Show full abstract]

Although perceived continuity with one’s future self has attracted increasing research interest, age differences in this phenomenon remain poorly understood. The present study is the first to simultaneously examine past and future self-continuity across multiple temporal distances using both explicit and implicit measures and controlling for a range of theoretically implicated covariates in an adult life span sample (N = 91, aged 18–92, M = 50.15, SD = 19.20, 56% female). Perceived similarity to one’s self across 6 past and 6 future time points (1 month to 10 years) was assessed with an explicit self-report measure and an implicit me/not me trait rating task. In multilevel analyses, age was significantly associated with greater implicit and explicit self-continuity, especially for more distant intervals. Further, reaction times (RTs) in the implicit task remained stable with temporal distance for older adults butdecreased with temporal distance for younger adults, especially for future ratings. This points toward age differences in the underlying mechanisms of self-continuity. Multilevel models examined the role of various covariates including personality, cognition, future horizons, and subjective health and found that none of them could fully account for the observed age effects. Taken together, our findings suggest that chronological age is associated with greater self-continuity although specific mechanisms and correlatesmay vary by age.

Abstract Ethical dilemmas pose a self-control conflict between pursuing immediate benefits through behaving dishonestly and pursuing long-term benefits through acts of honesty. Therefore, factors that facilitate self-control for other types of goals (e.g., health and financial) should also promote ethical behavior. Across four studies, we find support for this possibility. Specifically, we find that only under conditions that facilitate conflict identification-including the consideration of several decisions simultaneously (i.e., a broad decision frame) and perceived high connectedness to the future self-does anticipating a temptation to behave dishonestly in advance promote honesty. We demonstrate these interaction patterns between conflict identification and temptation anticipation in negotiation situations (Study 1), lab tasks (Study 2), and ethical dilemmas in the workplace (Studies 3-4). We conclude that identifying a self-control conflict and anticipating a temptation are two necessary preconditions for ethical decision making. 2015 by the Society for Personality and Social Psychology, Inc.

The tendency to live in the here and now, and the failure to think through the delayed consequences of behavior, is one of the strongest individual-level correlates of delinquency. We tested the hypothesis that this correlation results from a limited ability to imagine one's self in the future, which leads to opting for immediate gratification. Strengthening the vividness of the future self should therefore reduce involvement in delinquency. We tested and found support for this hypothesis in two studies. In Study 1, compared with participants in a control condition, those who wrote a letter to their future self were less inclined to make delinquent choices. In Study 2, participants who interacted with a realistic digital version of their future, age-progressed self in a virtual environment were less likely than control participants to cheat on a subsequent task.

In a field experiment, we use a novel method to test whether instilling a greater sense of vividness of the future self motivates people to act in a more future‐oriented way and reduces their delinquent involvement. We manipulate vividness of the future self by having participants, a sample of high‐school youth (N = 133), “befriend” an avatar representing their future self on a social network website. For 7 days, they reply to short messages from their future self designed to trigger thinking about that distant self. Using repeated‐measures analysis of variance (ANOVA), we find that participants who had been linked to their future self report less delinquent involvement, whereas controls did not. Furthermore, the results of a nonparametric bootstrapping procedure show that this effect is mediated by changes in vividness of the future self, such that increases in vividness lead to lower self‐reported delinquency. We conclude that vividness of the future self holds promise not only as a cognitive explanation for the failure to make informed cost–benefit trade‐offs but also for interventions aiming to reduce delinquency.

Seven studies provide evidence that representations of the self at a distant-future time point are more abstract and structured than are representations of the self at a near-future time point and that distant-future behaviors are more strongly related to general self-conceptions. Distant-future self-representations incorporate broader, more superordinate identities than do near-future self-representations (Study 1) and are characterized by less complexity (Study 2), more cross-situational consistency (Study 3), and a greater degree of schematicity (Study 4). Furthermore, people's behavioral predictions of their distant-future (vs. near-future) behavior are more strongly related to their general self-characteristics (Study 5), distant-future behaviors are seen as more self-expressive (Study 6), and distant-future behaviors that do not match up with acknowledged self-characteristics are more strongly rejected as reflections of the self (Study 7). Implications for understanding both the nature of the self-concept and the way in which distance may influence a range of self-processes are discussed.

Abstract Discusses the personalization of the temporally extended self during conceptual development as it relates to evaluative self-awareness and the development of autobiographical memory. Specifically, the author outlines a model that situates the development of an autobiographical self in social contexts and cognitive achievements of early childhood. First, representational abilities involved in social metacognition are discussed that may help children become active participants in conversations through which they learn how to organize representations of experience and remember the past. The author then emphasizes the importance of developing a personal and evaluative subjective perspective for interpreting experience and constructing an autobiographical self. The proposed model is also compared with other current views on the emergence of the temporally extended self and its relation to autobiographical memory. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2012 APA, all rights reserved)

This research examines how consumers evaluate a target in the present that is positively associated with them in the past or future. We suggest that such evaluations are affected by the perceived connectedness between their current self and temporal self, that is, the self at that particular point in time of association with the target in the past or future. A strong (vs. weak) connectedness will result in a more (vs. less) favorable evaluation of the target—be it a product, brand, or pro-social cause. Converging evidence supporting our premise is found in three studies.