Books & Articles So You Think You Know What Future You Want? Guess Again...

[Chase]

Read this a year ago, thought of it again quite recently: Why You Won’t Be the Person You Expect to Be. From a New York Times investigation on how bad we are at predicting how radically our lives, wants, and selves will change in the future. Some excerpts:

Thus, the typical 20-year-old woman’s predictions for her next decade were not nearly as radical as the typical 30-year-old woman’s recollection of how much she had changed in her 20s. This sort of discrepancy persisted among respondents all the way into their 60s.

“Believing that we just reached the peak of our personal evolution makes us feel good,” Dr. Quoidbach said. “The ‘I wish that I knew then what I know now’ experience might give us a sense of satisfaction and meaning, whereas realizing how transient our preferences and values are might lead us to doubt every decision and generate anxiety.”

Or maybe the explanation has more to do with mental energy: predicting the future requires more work than simply recalling the past. “People may confuse the difficulty of imagining personal change with the unlikelihood of change itself,” the authors wrote in Science.

When asked about their favorite band from a decade ago, respondents were typically willing to shell out $80 to attend a concert of the band today. But when they were asked about their current favorite band and how much they would be willing to spend to see the band’s concert in 10 years, the price went up to $129. Even though they realized that favorites from a decade ago like Creed or the Dixie Chicks have lost some of their luster, they apparently expect Coldplay and Rihanna to blaze on forever.

“The end-of-history effect may represent a failure in personal imagination,” said Dan P. McAdams, a psychologist at Northwestern who has done separate research into the stories people construct about their past and future lives. He has often heard people tell complex, dynamic stories about the past but then make vague, prosaic projections of a future in which things stay pretty much the same.

Chase

 

[Rage]

This makes sense to me, I believe this now, opposed to when I was younger and was sure that I'd be a pro gamer or musician or other x cool job.

Some studies say that a person's basic character is determined by age 7. Would this tie in here (perhaps their character is fixed but their influences, experiences, choices etc. aren't and are what make the future more unpredictable)?

And if a person couldn't predict how they might change in the future, is it possible that they might become polar opposite to who they are at a past age (I have no idea if this can happen or not; some people who've changed political affiliation from far one end of the spectrum to the other come to mind)?

If I were to guess I'd say an open-minded person with rational understanding of why he believes what he believes would be less susceptible to a polar change. But that's totally a guess, I wonder whether we can change 360 degrees.

-Gem