INCREASING SAVING BEHAVIOR THROUGH AGE-PROGRESSED RENDERINGS OF THE FUTURE SELF

By Hal E. Hershfield, Daniel G. Goldstein, W. Sharpe, Jesse Fox, Leo Yeykelis, L. Carstensen, Jeremy N. Bailenson. JMR, Journal of marketing research, 2011

619 citations recorded by the source corpus.

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.

Subfields: General Decision Sciences, Neuropsychology and Physiological Psychology, Social Psychology

View Paper: https://www.semanticscholar.org/paper/3792cca7fd8b7e6dca3e96f5e47e29e302c71b40

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Citations in the corpus

Avatar Embodiment. Towards a Standardized Questionnaire (2018, background): “The embodiment itself can be modulated by the type, race and look of the avatar participants embody (Hershfield et al., 2011; Kilteni et al., 2013; Peck et al., 2013).”
FRIENDS WITH MY FUTURE SELF: LONGITUDINAL VIVIDNESS INTERVENTION REDUCES DELINQUENCY† (2015, background): “Conversely, research has also shown that paying attention to long-term consequences predicts a higher intent to save money for retirement and healthy behaviors (Bartels, Urminsky, and Frederick, 2014; Hershfield et al., 2011; Strathman et al., 1994).”
Two minds, three ways: dual system and dual process models in consumer psychology (2012, background): “Establishing a connection and interaction between present and future self by means of age-progressed photographs can increase people’s likelihood to accept delayed monetary rewards over immediate rewards (Hershfield et al. 2011).”
Avatar characteristics induce users’ behavioral conformity with small-to-medium effect sizes: a meta-analysis of the proteus effect (2019, neutral): “…Seinfeld, Aglioti, & Slater, 2013), body dissatisfaction (Fox, Bailenson, & Tricase, 2013; Sylvia, King, & Morse, 2014), financial risk-taking (Hershfield et al., 2011), consumer choices (Ahn & Bailenson, 2011), math performance (Lee, Nass, & Bailenson, 2014; Ratan & Sah, 2015), student…”
Virtual Superheroes: Using Superpowers in Virtual Reality to Encourage Prosocial Behavior (2013, background): “For example, Hershfield and colleagues [13] described studies in which virtual doppelgangers (virtual humans bearing a strong resemblance to the self) were created and manipulated to test how seeing an older version of oneself would affect the amount of money saved for retirement.”
Household energy use: Applying behavioural economics to understand consumer decision-making and behaviour (2015, background): “[137] found that connecting people to their ‘future selves’ (via interaction with photorealistic ageprocessed renderings of themselves) led to lower discounting of future rewards and higher contributions to saving accounts.”
Illusory ownership of a virtual child body causes overestimation of object sizes and implicit attitude changes (2013, background): “(24) used IVR to expose participants to their future-aged selves to study the impact on attitudes toward monetary saving for the future.”
Nudging and Boosting: Steering or Empowering Good Decisions (2017, background): “…attention state training (e.g., Tang & Posner, 2009; Tang, Tang, & Posner, 2013; see also Moffitt et al., 2011), psychological connectedness training (Hershfield et al., 2011), reward-bundling exercises (Ainslie, 1992, 2012), the strategic use of automatic processes (i.e., harnessing simple…”
Behavioral Economics of Education: Progress and Possibilities (2015, positive): “Reading scores improved by 0.25 standard deviations, suggesting that incentivizing learning inputs, like 108 Hershfield et al, 2011.”
Drumming in Immersive Virtual Reality: The Body Shapes the Way We Play (2013, background): “A closely related concept is that of ‘virtual doppelgangers’, where a participant sees an alternate selfrepresentation carrying out activities [36-39], designed to induce attitudinal changes in the participant.”
To Know and to Care: How Awareness and Valuation of the Future Jointly Shape Consumer Spending (2014, background): “Explicitly directing people’s attention to future consequences can increase their preference for delayed rewards (Hershfield et al. 2011), and a greater focus on long-term consequences predicts higher intent to save more money for retirement (Nenkov, Inman, and Hulland 2008) and higher (self-reporte”
AI-generated characters for supporting personalized learning and well-being (2021, background): “For example, one virtual reality-based study found that users exposed to age-progressed renderings of themselves had an ‘increased tendency to prefer delayed monetary rewards over immediate ones’ 50 .”