Does Self-Projection Have a Dominant Temporal Direction?
A new article examines how people project their current sense of self across time, finding that we tend to feel more similar to the person we will become in the future than the person we used to be in the past.
The paper is entitled “Does Self-Projection Have a Dominant Temporal Direction? In Nine Countries, People Feel More Similar to Their Future Than Past Selves” by Hallgeir Sjåstad, together with Jareef Martuza, Simen Bø, and Helge Thorbjørnsen.
Across 12 studies involving more than 11,000 participants in nine countries, the authors find a consistent future-oriented pattern: people currently perceive themselves as more similar to their future selves than to equally distant past selves. This tendency is associated with a stronger emotional connection to the future self and with expecting less personal change in the future.
The study also shows that this asymmetry can shape expectations about future decisions. People expect their future selves to be more satisfied with decisions made today than they currently are with similar decisions made in the past.
Taken together, the findings offer new insight into how people think about who they were, who they are, and who they expect to become in the future. The paper has been published in the top field journal Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin.