RESEARCH

Hershfield, H. E., Shu, S., Benartzi, S. (2020). Marketing Science.

A growing percentage of American workers are now freelancers and thus responsible for their own retirement savings, yet they face a number of psychological hurdles that hamper them from saving enough money for the long-term. Although prior theory-derived interventions have been successful in addressing some of these obstacles, encouraging participation in saving programs is a challenging endeavor for policymakers and consumers alike. In a field setting, we test whether framing savings in more or less granular formats (e.g., saving daily versus monthly) can encourage continued saving behavior through increasing the take-up of a recurring deposit program. Among thousands of new users of a financial technology app, we find that framing deposits in daily amounts as opposed to monthly amounts quadruples the number of consumers who enroll. Further, framing deposits in more granular terms reduced the participation gap between lower and higher income consumers: three times as many consumers in the highest rather than lowest income bracket participated in the program when it was framed as a $150 monthly deposit, but this difference in participation was eliminated when deposits were framed as $5 per day.

Hershfield, H. E., & Maglio, S. J. (2019). Journal of Experimental Psychology: General. Advance online publication.

Through the process of prospection, people can mentally travel in time to summon in their mind’s eye events that have yet to occur. Such depictions of the future often differ than those of the present, as do choices made for these 2 time periods. Conceptually and semantically, this research tradition presupposes a division between the 2: At some point in the progression of time, the present must yield to the future. Still, the field to date has offered little insight by way of defining the division that separates the present from the future. The basic scientific appeal and practical implications of prospection beg 2 related questions: When do people believe that the present ends and the future begins, and do such perceptions affect decision-making? To the first question, perceptions of when the present ends vary across people (Study 1) and are reliable over time (Study 2). To the second, when people believe that the present ends sooner, they are more likely to make future-oriented choices in correlational and experimental contexts, even when controlling for potentially related constructs (Studies 3–5). Finally, we identify a psychological mechanism underlying this relationship: A shorter present is associated with a sharper division from the future (Study 6a), and this sharp division accounts for future-oriented behavior toward both hypothetical (Study 6b) and incentive-compatible (Study 6c) outcomes. This research sheds light on a foundational but unexplored prerequisite for thinking and acting across time. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2019 APA, all rights reserved)

Hershfield, H.E., John, E.M. & Reiff, J.S. (2018). Policy Insights from the Behavioral and Brain Sciences, 5(2) , 209–215.

Prior policy work has effectively eased some financial problems that Americans face: Automatic enrollment in retirement saving accounts has drastically increased the number of workers who participate in defined contribution retirement plans. Yet, such choice architecture interventions cannot always be implemented, and even when they can, they are beholden to whatever decisions the choice architect made and, in any case, may not go far enough in helping maximize financial well-being over time. Additional interventions thus need to complement already successful choice architecture ones. Namely, because many financial decisions involve trade-offs between present and future selves, with the present self often being prioritized, this review highlights interventions that make the future self more vivid to decision makers. We discuss the theoretical background underlying such interventions, the factors that may make vividness interventions more or less effective in policy contexts, and possible future directions for researchers and policy makers.

Hershfield, H.E. (2018). Current Opinion in Psychology, 26 , 72–75.

People often have difficulty making decisions that maximize well-being over time, and researchers have explored various reasons for why such poor ‘intertemporal’ decision-making may arise. In this article, I review a body of work that has focused on how the relationship between current and future selves may influence judgments and decisions. Namely, I spotlight research suggesting that the future self is often thought of as another person and how feelings about this ‘other’ person impact decisions across domains. I then review two insights gleaned from this research: in order to positively modify long-term decision-making, interventions may wish to focus on (1) strengthening the felt bond between current and future selves, or (2) reducing the subjective pain of sacrifices made by the current self. I close with several questions future research may wish to address.

Hershfield, H.E. & Bartels, D. (2018). The Future Self, In Oettingen, G., Sevincer, A.T., & Gollwitzer, P.M. (eds). The Psychology of Thinking about the Future. The Guilford Press.

Whether it is the choice between spending and saving, eating a tempting dessert versus maintaining one’s diet, or sinning rather than acting in a less exciting but more morally upstanding way, many decisions require making tradeoffs between the present and the future.

Rutchick, A.M., Slepian, M.L., Reyes, M.O., Pleskus, L.N., & Hershfield, H.E. (2018). Journal of Experimental Psychology: Applied, 24, No. 1 , 72-80.

To the extent that people feel more continuity between their present and future selves, they are more likely to make decisions with the future self in mind. The current studies examined future self-continuity in the context of health. In Study 1, people reported the extent to which they felt similar and connected to their future self; people with more present-future continuity reported having better subjective health across a variety of measures. In Study 2, people were randomly assigned to write a letter to themselves either three months or 20 years into the future; people for whom continuity with the distant future self was enhanced exercised more in the days following the writing task. These findings suggest that future self-continuity promotes adaptive long-term health behavior, suggesting the promise of interventions enhancing future self-continuity.

Mogilner, C., Hershfield, H.E., Aaker, J. (2018). Consumer Psychology Review, 1, 41–53.

How people think about and use their time has critical implications for happiness and well-being. Extant research on time in the consumer behavior literature reveals a pre- dominantly dichotomized perspective of time between the present and future. Drawing on research on emotions, social relationships, and financial decision-making, we discuss how removing categorical dichotomies might lead to beneficial outcomes. From this, we propose a conceptualization of time that assumes a less stark contrast between the present and the future, allowing these two time frames to more flexibly coexist in people’s minds and experiences. Finally, we discuss one way people might adopt this perspective to increase happiness—by taking an elevated or “bird’s-eye” perspective of time where the future and present, as well as the past, become equally visible, and where events from different time points are treated and experienced as part of one’s life and being overall.

Hershfield, H.E*., Mogilner, C.*, & Barnea, U. (2016). Social Psychological and Personality Science.

Money and time are both scarce resources that people believe would bring them greater happiness. But would people prefer having more money or more time? And how does one’s preference between resources relate to happiness? Across studies, we asked thousands of Americans whether they would prefer more money or more time. Although the majority of people chose more money, choosing more time was associated with greater happiness—even controlling for existing levels of available time and money. Additional studies and experiments provide insight into choosers’ underlying rationale and the causal direction of the effect.

Goldstein, D.G., Hershfield, H.E., & Benartzi, S. (2016). Journal of Marketing Research, 53, 804-813.

Research on choice architecture is now shaping policy around the world, touching on areas ranging from retirement economics to environmental issues. Recently, researchers and policy makers have started to pay more attention not just to choice architecture but also to information architecture: the format in which information is presented to people. Here, we investigate information architecture as it applies to consumption in retirement. Specifically, in four experiments, we examine how people react to lump sums versus equivalent streams of monthly income. Our primary question of interest is whether people exhibit an “illusion of wealth” by which a lump sum at retirement age (e.g., $100,000) seems larger than its monthly equivalent (e.g., $500 per month for life). We predict and test whether people exhibit the illusion of wealth as well as the opposite effect, by which lump sums seem smaller than their monthly equivalents. We conclude by discussing how format-dependent perceptions of wealth might drive retirees to claim social security benefits too early, avoid purchasing an annuity, or to cash out their defined benefit pensions.

Hershfield, H.E.*, Sussman, A.B.*, O’Brien, R.L., & Bryan, C.J. (2015). Perspectives on Psychological Science, 10, 749-752.

U.S. consumers currently hold $880 billion in revolving debt, with a mean household credit card balance of approximately $6,000. Although economic factors play a role in this societal issue, it is clear that psychological forces also affect consumers' decisions to take on and maintain unmanageable debt balances. We examine three psychological barriers to the responsible use of credit and debt. We discuss the tendency for consumers to (a) make erroneous predictions about future spending habits, (b) rely too heavily on values presented on billing statements, and (c) categorize debt and saving into separate mental accounts. To overcome these obstacles, we urge policymakers to implement methods that facilitate better budgeting of future expenses, modify existing credit card statement disclosures, and allow consumers to easily apply government transfers (such as tax credits) to debt repayment. In doing so, we highlight minimal and inexpensive ways to remedy the debt problem.

Waytz, A., Hershfield, H.E.*, & Tamir, D.I.* (2015). Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 108, 336-355.

Mental simulation, the process of self-projection into alternate temporal, spatial, social, or hypothetical realities is a distinctively human capacity. Numerous lines of research also suggest that the tendency for mental simulation is associated with enhanced meaning. The present research tests this association specifically examining the relationship between two forms of simulation (temporal and spatial) and meaning in life. Study 1 uses neuroimaging to demonstrate that enhanced connectivity in the medial temporal lobe network, a subnetwork of the brain’s default network implicated in prospection and retrospection, correlates with self-reported meaning in life. Study 2 demonstrates that experimentally inducing people to think about the past or future versus the present enhances self-reported meaning in life, through the generation of more meaningful events. Study 3 demonstrates that experimentally inducing people to think specifically versus generally about the past or future enhances self-reported meaning in life. Study 4 turns to spatial simulation to demonstrate that experimentally inducing people to think specifically about an alternate spatial location (from the present location) increases meaning derived from this simulation compared to thinking generally about another location or specifically about one’s present location. Study 5 demonstrates that experimentally inducing people to think about an alternate spatial location versus one’s present location enhances meaning in life, through meaning derived from this simulation. Study 6 demonstrates that simply asking people to imagine completing a measure of meaning in life in an alternate location compared with asking them to do so in their present location enhances reports of meaning. This research sheds light on an important determinant of meaning in life and suggests that undirected mental simulation benefits psychological well-being.

Tully, S.M., Hershfield, H.E., & Meyvis, T. (2015). Journal of Consumer Research, 42, 59-73.

Consumers with limited discretionary money face important trade-offs when decid- ing how to spend it. In the current research, we suggest that feelings of financial constraint increase consumers’ concern about the lasting utility of their purchases, which in turn increases their preference for material goods over experiences. The results of seven studies confirm that the consideration of financial constraints shifts consumers’ preferences toward material goods (rather than experiences), and that this systematic shift is due to an increased concern about the longevity of the purchase. This preference shift persists even when the material goods are more frivolous than the experiences, indicating that the effect is not driven by an increased desire for sensible and justifiable purchases. However, the shift toward material purchases disappears when the material purchase is unusually short lived, further implicating concern about longevity as the key driver of the effect. Finally, the consideration of financial constraints increases preference for material purchases even when the potential memories that experiences can provide are made explicitly salient. Together, these results indicate that financially constrained consumers spend their discretionary money on material purchases as a means of securing long-term consumption utility.

Van Gelder, J-L, Luciano, E., Kranenbarg, M.W., & Hershfield, H.E. (2015). Criminology, 53, 1-22.

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. Us- ing repeated-measures analysis of variance (ANOVA), we find that participants who had been linked to their future self report less delinquent involvement, whereas con- trols 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 vivid- ness 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.

Hershfield, H.E. & Roese, N.J. (2015). Journal of Consumer Psychology, 25, 15-27.

U.S. Federal regulation from 2009 requires credit card companies to convey information regarding payoff scenarios, i.e., details such as total amount paid and time to pay off when only a minimum payment is made (over time). Across seven studies, the present research shows that consumers who were given a dual payoff scenario (i.e., how much is paid in total based on the minimum payment and also based on a 3-year payoff window) on credit card statements recommended lower payments than those given a single payoff scenario (when the 3-year payment amount was less than what they would have paid otherwise), and were less likely to pay off the balance in full. The effect is driven by a tendency of consumers to infer that the 3-year payment amount is the most appropriate. The dual-scenario effect is minimized by an intervention that draws attention away from the 3-year payment amount. Theoretical and public policy implications are considered.

Hershfield, H.E., Bang, H.M., & Weber, E.U. (2014). Psychological Science, 25, 152-160.

There are obvious economic predictors of ability and willingness to invest in environmental sustainability. Yet, given that environmental decisions represent trade-offs between present sacrifices and uncertain future benefits, psychological factors may also play a role in country-level environmental behavior. Gott’s principle suggests that citizens may use perceptions of their country’s age to predict its future continuation, with longer pasts predicting longer futures. Using country- and individual-level analyses, we examined whether longer perceived pasts result in longer perceived futures, which in turn motivate concern for continued environmental quality. Study 1 found that older countries scored higher on an environmental performance index, even when the analysis controlled for country-level differences in gross domestic product and governance. Study 2 showed that when the United States was framed as an old country (vs. a young one), participants were willing to donate more money to an environmental organization. The findings suggest that framing a country as a long-standing entity may effectively prompt proenvironmental behavior.

Alter, A.* & Hershfield, H.E.* (2014). Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, 111, 17066-17070.

Although humans measure time using a continuous scale, certain numerical ages inspire greater self-reflection than others. Six studies show that adults undertake a search for existential meaning when they approach a new decade in age (e.g., at ages 29, 39, 49, etc.) or imagine entering a new epoch, which leads them to behave in ways that suggest an ongoing or failed search for meaning (e.g., by exercising more vigorously, seeking extramarital affairs, or choosing to end their lives).

van Gelder, J-L, Hershfield, H.E., & Nordgren, L.F. (2013). Psychological Science, 24(6), 974-980.

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.

Hershfield, H.E., Scheibe, S., Sims, T., & Carstensen, L.L. (2013). Social Psychological and Personality Science, 4(1), 54-61.

Traditional models of emotion–health interactions have emphasized the deleterious effects of negative emotions on physical health. More recently, researchers have turned to potential benefits of positive emotions on physical health as well. Both lines of research, though, neglect the complex interplay between positive and negative emotions and how this interplay affects physical well-being. Indeed, recent theoretical work suggests that a strategy of ‘‘taking the good with the bad’’ may benefit health outcomes. In the present study, the authors assessed the impact of mixed emotional experiences on health outcomes in a 10-year longitudinal experience-sampling study across the adult life span. The authors found that not only were frequent experi- ences of mixed emotions (co-occurrences of positive and negative emotions) strongly associated with relatively good physical health, but that increases of mixed emotions over many years attenuated typical age-related health declines.

Bryan, C.J. & Hershfield, H.E. (2012). You owe it to yourself: Boosting retirement saving with a responsibility-based appeal. Journal of Experimental Psychology: General, 141(3), 429-432.

Americans are not saving enough for retirement. Previous research suggests that this is due, in part, to people’s tendency to think of the future self as more like another person than like the present self, making saving feel like giving money away rather than like investing in oneself. Using objective employer saving data, a field experiment capitalized on this phenomenon to increase saving. It compared the effectiveness of a novel message—one appealing to people’s sense of “social” responsibility to their future selves— with a more traditional appeal to people’s sense of rational self-interest. The social-responsibility-to- the-future-self message resulted in larger increases in saving than the self-interest message, but only to the extent that people felt a strong “social” connection to their future selves. These results broaden our understanding of the psychology of moral responsibility and refine our understanding of the role of future-self continuity in fostering intertemporal patience. They further demonstrate how understanding conceptions of the self over time can suggest solutions to important and challenging policy problems.

Adler, J.* & Hershfield, H.E.* (2012). PLoS ONE, 7(4), 1-10.

The relationships between positive and negative emotional experience and physical and psychological well- being have been well-documented. The present study examines the prospective positive relationship between concurrent positive and negative emotional experience and psychological well-being in the context of psychotherapy.

Carstensen, L.L., Turan, B., Scheibe, S., Ram, N., Ersner-Hershfield, H., Samanez-Larkin, G.R., Brooks, K., & Nesselroade, J.R. (2011). Psychology and Aging, 26(1), 21-33.

Recent evidence suggests that emotional well-being improves from early adulthood to old age. This study used experience-sampling to examine the developmental course of emotional experience in a representative sample of adults spanning early to very late adulthood. Participants (N 184, Wave 1; N 191, Wave 2; N 178, Wave 3) reported their emotional states at five randomly selected times each day for a one week period. Using a measurement burst design, the one-week sampling procedure was repeated five and then ten years later. Cross-sectional and growth curve analyses indicate that aging is associated with more positive overall emotional well-being, with greater emotional stability and with more complexity (as evidenced by greater co-occurrence of positive and negative emotions). These findings remained robust after accounting for other variables that may be related to emotional experience (personality, verbal fluency, physical health, and demographic variables). Finally, emotional experience predicted mortality; controlling for age, sex, and ethnicity, individuals who experienced relatively more positive than negative emotions in everyday life were more likely to have survived over a 13 year period. Findings are discussed in the theoretical context of socioemotional selectivity theory.

Hershfield, H.E., Goldstein, D.G., Sharpe, W.F., Fox, J., Yeykelvis, L., Carstensen, L.L., & Bailenson, J. (2011). Increasing saving behavior through age-progressed renderings of the future self. Journal of Marketing Research, 48, S23-S27.

Many people fail to save what they will need for retirement. Research on excessive discounting of the future suggests that removing the lure of immediate rewards by precommitting to decisions or elaborating the value of future rewards both can make decisions more future oriented. The authors explore a third and complementary route, one that deals not with present and future rewards but with present and future selves. In line with research that shows that people may fail, because of a lack of belief or imagination, to identify with their future selves, the authors propose that allowing people to interact with age-progressed renderings of themselves will cause them to allocate more resources to 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 their virtual future selves exhibited an increased tendency to accept later monetary rewards over immediate ones.

Hershfield, H.E. (2011). Future self-continuity: How conceptions of the future self transform intertemporal choice. Annals of the New York Academy of Sciences, 1235(2011), 30-43.

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.

Zhang, X., Ersner-Hershfield, H., & Fung, H.H. (2010). Psychology and Aging, 25(2), 310-320.

Poignancy is defined as a mixed emotional experience that arises when one faces meaningful endings. According to socioemotional selectivity theory (Carstensen, 2006), when people are aware of the finitude of time, they tend to experience more poignancy. In Study 1, we found that Chinese younger, but not older, participants experienced more poignancy under time limitations. In Study 2, we found that an emotion regulation strategy—namely, cognitive reappraisal—moderated the relationship between limited time and poignancy, such that the increases in poignancy under time limitations were found only among older Chinese participants with lower levels of cognitive reappraisal but not among those with higher levels of cognitive reappraisal. These findings contribute to the existing literature on poignancy by showing that not every older adult exhibits poignancy in the face of an ending: The poignancy phenomenon may occur among only older adults who are less likely to use an emotion regulation strategy, such as cognitive reappraisal, to reinterpret the anticipated ending.

Ersner-Hershfield, H., Galinsky, A., Kray, L., & King, B. (2010). Psychological Science, 21(10), 1479-1486.

Four studies examined the relationship between counterfactual origins—thoughts about how the beginning of organizations, countries, and social connections might have turned out differently—and increased feelings of commitment to those institutions and connections. Study 1 found that counterfactually reflecting on the origins of one’s country increases patriotism. Study 2 extended this finding to organizational commitment and examined the mediating role of poignancy. Study 3 found that counterfactual reflection boosts organizational commitment even beyond the effects of other commitment-enhancing appeals and that perceptions of fate mediate the positive effect of counterfactual origins on commitment. Finally, Study 4 temporally separated the counterfactual manipulation from a behavioral measure of commitment and found that counterfactual reflection predicted whether participants e-mailed social contacts 2 weeks later. The robust relationship between counterfactual origins and commitment was found across a wide range of companies and countries, with undergraduates and M.B.A. students, and for attitudes and behaviors.

Ersner-Hershfield, H., Carvel, D.S., & Isaacowitz, D.M. (2009). Motivation and Emotion, 33(4), 333-342.

Poignancy is a mixed emotional experience that occurs in the face of meaningful endings (Ersner-Hershfield et al. J Pers Soc Psychol 94(1):158–167, 2008). Despite documentation of the phenomenological component of poi- gnancy, no study to date has examined the relationship between such a state and information processing. We there- fore examined the link between poignancy and attentional patterns using an eyetracking paradigm. To induce poi- gnancy, experimental condition participants imagined being in a personally chosen meaningful location for a final time; control participants also imagined being in a meaningful location but with no ending. After, both groups were shown emotional images. Experimental condition participants looked more at positive images relative to negative images, whereas participants in the control condition did not display such a preference. Findings suggest that despite being a mixed emotional experience, poignancy may produce a subsequent positivity effect in information processing.

Ersner-Hershfield, H., Garton, M.T., Ballard, K., Samanez-Larkin, G.R., & Knutson, B. (2009). Don’t stop thinking about tomorrow: Individual differences in future self-continuity account for saving. Judgment and Decision Making, 4(4), 280-286.

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.

Ersner-Hershfield, H., Wimmer, G.E., & Knutson, B. (2009). Neural evidence for self-continuity in temporal discounting. Social Cognitive and Affective Neuroscience, 4(1), 85-92.

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 per- ceive 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.

Ersner-Hershfield, H., Mikels, J. A., Sullivan, S., & Carstensen, L. L. (2008). Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 94, 158-67.

The experience of mixed emotions increases with age. Socioemotional selectivity theory suggests that mixed emotions are associated with shifting time horizons. Theoretically, perceived constraints on future time increase appreciation for life, which, in turn, elicits positive emotions such as happiness. Yet, the very same temporal constraints heighten awareness that these positive experiences come to an end, thus yielding mixed emotional states. In 2 studies, the authors examined the link between the awareness of anticipated endings and mixed emotional experience. In Study 1, participants repeatedly imagined being in a meaningful location. Participants in the experimental condition imagined being in the meaningful location for the final time. Only participants who imagined “last times” at meaningful locations experienced more mixed emotions. In Study 2, college seniors reported their emotions on graduation day. Mixed emotions were higher when participants were reminded of the ending that they were experiencing. Findings suggest that poignancy is an emotional experience associated with meaningful endings.

Hershfield, H.E., Cohen, T., & Thompson, L. (2012). Short horizons and shady situations: When lack of continuity to our future selves leads to unethical behavior. Organizational Behavior and Human Decision Processes, 117, 298-310.

People who feel continuity with their future selves are more likely to behave in ethically responsible ways as compared to people who lack continuity with their future selves. We find that individual differences in perceived similarity to one’s future self predicts tolerance of unethical business decisions (Studies 1a and 1b), and that the consideration of future consequences mediates the extent to which people regard inappropriate negotiation strategies as unethical (Study 2). We reveal that low future self-continuity predicts unethical behavior in the form of lies, false promises, and cheating (Studies 3 and 4), and that these relationships hold when controlling for general personality dimensions and trait levels of self-control (Study 4). Finally, we establish a causal relationship between future self-continuity and ethical judgments by showing that when people are prompted to focus on their future self (as opposed to the future), they express more disapproval of unethical behavior (Study 5).