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The End of History Illusion

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Older and Wiser Do we ever stop growing up? Quoidbach et al. (p. 96 ) elicited estimates of people's personality, values, and choices and compared how much, for instance, 33-year-olds believed that they would change in the next 10 years with how much 43-year-olds reported that they had changed in the past 10 years. For groups spanning 18 to 68 years of age, people of all ages described more change in the past 10 years than they would have predicted 10 years ago.
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DOI: 10.1126/science.1229294
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The End of History Illusion
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The End of History Illusion
Jordi Quoidbach,
1,2
Daniel T. Gilbert,
2
* Timothy D. Wilson
3
We measured the personalities, values, and preferences of more than 19,000 people who ranged in
age from 1 8 to 68 and asked them to report how much they had changed in the past decade and/or
to predict how much they would change in the next decade. Young people, middle-aged people, and
older people all believed they had changed a lot in the p ast but would change relatively little in the future.
People, it seems, regard the present as a watershed moment at which they have finally become the
person they will be for the rest of their lives. This end of history illusion had practical consequences,
leading people to overpay for future opportunities to indulge their current preferences.
A
teverystageoflife,peoplemakede-
cisions that profoundly influence the
lives of the people they will become
and when they finally become those people,
they arentalwaysthrilledaboutit.Youngadults
pay to remove the tattoos that teenagers paid
to get, middle-aged adults rush to divorce the
people whom young adults rushed to marry,
and older adults visit health spas to lose what
middle-aged adults visited restaurants to gain.
Why do people so often make decisions that their
future selves regret?
One possibility is that people have a funda-
mental misconception about their future selves.
Time is a powerful force that transforms peoples
preferences, reshapes their values, and alters
their personalities, and we suspect that people
generally underestimate the magnitude of those
changes. In other words, people may believe
that who they are today is pretty much who they
will be tomorrow , despite the fact that it isnt
who they were yesterday. In the studies we de-
scribe here, we showed that people expect to
change little in the future, despite knowing that
they have changed a lot in the past, and that this
tende n c y bed e vi l s the i r dec i s io n -m a k in g . We call
this tendency to underestimate the magnitude
of future change the end of history illusion.
To investigate this phenomenon, we asked
samples of people who varied widely in age to
predict how much they would change over the
next 10 years, we asked similar samples to re-
port how much they had changed over the past
10 years, and we compared the predictions of
people aged a years to the reports of people aged
a+10 years. W e expected people aged a years
to predict less change over the next 10 years
than people aged a+10 years reported over the
pas t 10 ye a r s . We us e d thi s st r a t e g y to st u d y ho w
much people thought they would change in the
domains of personality (a personscharacter-
istic patterns of behavior), core values (a persons
ideals and principles), and preferences (a persons
likes and dislikes).
In study 1, we sought to determine whether
people underestimate the extent to which their
person ali tie s will change in the future. We re-
cruited a sample of 7519 adults ranging in age
fro m 18 to 68 ye ar s [me a n (M)=40years,stan-
dard deviation (SD) = 1 1.3 years, 80% women]
through the W eb site of a popular television show
and asked them to complete the T en Item Per-
sonality Inventory (1), which is a standard mea-
sure of the five trait dimensions that underlie
human personality (i.e., conscientiousness, agree-
ableness, emotional stability, openness to experi-
ence, and extraversion). Participants were then
randomly assigned either to the reporter condi-
tion (and were asked to complete the measure as
they would have completed it 10 years earlier) or
the predictor condition (and were asked to com-
plete the measure as they thought they would
complete it 10 years hence). We then computed
the absolute value of the difference between par-
ticipants ratings of their current personality and
their reported or predicted personality and aver-
aged these across the five traits to create a mea-
sure of reported or predicted change in personality .
Additional methodological details about study
1canbefoundinsupplementarytext1to3.
We analyzed these measures by first assigning
avaluetoeachofthe4110-yearperiodsbetween
ages 18 and 68. W e called this variable de cade.
For each decade, we compared the predictions of
predictors aged a to the reports of reporters aged
a +10years.So,forexample,whendecade=1,
we compared 18-year-old predictors and 28-year-
old reporters; when decade = 2, we compared
19-year-old predictors and 29-year-old reporters;
and so on. We did not coll ec t data from repor t er s
who were younger than 28 years, because in our
sample there were no predictors younger than
18 years with whom to compare them, and we
did not collect data from predictors who were
older than 58 years, because in our sample there
were no repo rter s older than 68 years with whom
to compare them.
We entered participants reported or predicted
changes in personality into a multiple regression
analysis with three predictor variables: decade
(coded 1 through 41), condition (coded 1 for pre-
dictors and 1forreporters),andadecade X
condition interaction. First, the analysis revealed
an effect of decade [beta coefficient (b)= 0.13,
P <0.001],indicatingthattheoldertheparticipants
were, the less personality change they reported or
predicted. This finding is consistent with a large
body of research showing that personality becomes
more stable as people age (2). Second, the anal-
ysis revealed the expected ef fect of condition (b =
0.14, P <0.001).ThetoppanelofFig.1shows
this end of history illusion: Predictors aged a
predicted that they would change less over the
next decade than reporters aged a +10years
reported having changed over the same decade.
Finally , there was no decade X condition inter-
action (b =0.01,P =0.68),indicatingthatthe
magnitude of the end of history illusi on did not
change across decades. Next, we conducted follow-
up studies to answer three questions.
First, is it possible that the discrepancy be-
tween participants reports and predictions in
study 1 was due entirely to the erroneous mem-
ory of reporters, who may have overestimated
how much they had changed in the past 10 years,
rather than to the erroneous predictions of pre-
dictors, who may have underestimated how much
they would change in the next 10 years? T o in-
vestigate this possibility , we compared the mag-
nitudes of the predicted and reported personality
changes in our sample to the magnitude of ac-
tual personality change observed in an indepen-
dent sample of 3808 adults ranging from 20 to
75 years old ( M =47.2years,SD=12.4years,
55% women), whose personalities had been mea-
sured as part of the MacArthur Foundation Sur-
vey of Midlife Development in the United States
(MIDUS). These adults completed the MIDUS
Big Five s cale (3)forthefirsttimein1995199 6
(MIDUS 1) and for a second time in 20042006
(MIDUS 2). The MIDUS Big Five scale has good
construct validity and correlates with other sim-
ilar scales (4, 5). Because the personality mea-
sures used in the MIDUS study and in our study
were scored on different scales, direct compari-
son of the data was not possible. To estimate
the magnitudes of actual, reported, and predicted
personality change, we computed intraclass cor-
relations (ICC-A1), which account for both ab-
solute and rank-based change (6). Specifically,
we computed (i) the ICC between the two admin-
istrations of the personality test in the MIDUS
sample, which was 0.52; (ii) the ICC between cur-
rent and reported personality for participants in
our sample, which was 0.51; and (iii) the ICC be-
tween current and predicted personality for par-
ticipants in our sample, which was 0.65. Larger
ICCs, of course, indicate less personality change.
As inspection of these ICCs reveals, the magnitude
of reported personality change in our sample was
almost identical to the magnitude of actual per-
sonality change in the MIDUS sample, suggesting
that participants in our sample were relatively ac-
curate when reporting the amount of change they
had experienced in the past. However , the magni-
tude of actual personality change in the MIDUS
sample was substantially larger than the magni-
tude of predicted personality change in our sam-
ple, suggesting that participants in our sample
were relatively inaccurate when predicting the
amount of change they would experience in the
future. In short, it seems likely that the discrepan-
cy between the reported and predicted personality
1
National Fund for Scientific Research, Brussels, Belgium.
2
Department of Psychology, Harvard University, Cambridge,
MA 02138, USA.
3
Department of Psychology, University of
Virginia, Charlottesville, VA 229044400, USA.
*To whom correspondence should be addressed. E-mail:
gilbert@wjh.harvard.edu
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changes of participants in study 1 is due at least
in part to errors of prediction and not merely to
errors of memory . Study 3 pr ovides further support
for this claim.
Second, is it possible that reporters and pre-
dictors in study 1 interpreted the scales differ-
ently, so that words such as conscientious or
agreeable meant one thing to reporters and
another thing to predictors? To investigate this
possibility, we replicated study 1 with an indepen-
dent sample of 613 adults (M =40.5years,SD=
8.4 years, 86.6% women) recruited through the
same W eb site and using a design in which each
participant was assigned to both the reporter and
the predictor conditions, thus ensuring that any
idiosyncratic interpretation of the scales would
influence both conditions equally. This design
requ ired tha t we re s t r i c t our s a mp l e to pa r t i c i p a n t s
aged 28 to 58. Because participants contributed
data to both conditions, we performed a multi-
level version of the analysis described in study
1. The analysis revealed the expected effect of
condition (b = 7.69, P =0.001),indicating
that predictors aged a years predicted that they
would change less over the next decade than re-
porters aged a +10yearsreportedhavingchanged
over the same decadeeven though the reports
and predictions were made by the same partic-
ipants. This finding suggests that idiosyncratic
interpretations of the scale are not the cause of
the effects seen in study 1.
Third, is it possible that predictors in study
1knewthattheywouldchangeoverthenext
10 years, but because they did not know exactly
how they would change, they did not feel confi-
dent predicting specific changes? To investigate
thi s possi bility, we re pl i cate d study 1 with a n inde-
pendent sample of 1163 adults (M =38.4years,
SD = 12.1 years, 78% women) recruited through
the same Web site. Instead of being asked to
report or predict their specific personality traits,
these participants were simply asked to report
how much they felt they had changed as a
person over the last 10 years and how much they
thought they would change as a person over the
next 10 years. Because some participants con-
tributed data to both conditions, we performed a
multilevel version of the analysis described in
study 1. The analysis revealed the expected effect
of condition (b = 0.74, P =0.007),indicating
that predictors aged a years predicted that they
would change less over the next decade than
reporters aged a +10yearsreportedhavingchanged
over the same decade. This finding suggests that
alackofspecificknowledgeabouthowone
might change in the future was not the cause of
the effects seen in study 1.
In study 2, we sought to determine whether
the end of history illusion was limited to the do-
main of personality, and so we repeated our pro-
cedure in the domain of core values. W e recruited
anewsampleof2717adultsranginginagefrom
18 to 68 years (M =38.6years,SD=10.6years,
82% women) through the same W eb site and
asked them to indicate the importance of each
of 10 basic values (such as hedon is m, suc ce ss ,
security, etc.) that were taken from the Schwartz
Valu e Inve nto ry (7). Otherwise, the design was
identical to that of study 1.
We performed a regression analysis similar to
the one performed in study 1. First, the analysis
revealed an effect of decade (b = 0.23, P <
0.0010, indicating that the older participants
were, the less change in their core values they
reported or predicted. Second, the analysis re-
vealed the expected effect of condition (b =
0.46, P <0.001).ThemiddlepanelofFig.1
shows this end of history illusion: Predictors
aged a years predicted that they would change
less over the next d ecad e than reporter s aged
a +10yearsreportedhavingchangedoverthe
Fig. 1. Standardized predicted and reported changes across dec ades in study 1 (top panel), s tudy 2 (middle panel), and study 3 (bottom panel). The graph
shows moving averages smoothed with a 4-year Gaussian filter. Additional information about this figure can be found in supplementary text 4.
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same decade. Finally, the analysis revealed a dec-
ade × condition interaction (b =0.08,P <0.001).
Although the magnitude of the end of hist o r y
illusion decreased as participants got older, it was
nonetheless present even in the oldest group of
participants (aged 50 and up) (b = 0.34, P <
0.001). Further discussion of this decade × con-
dition interaction can be found in supplementary
text 5.
The foregoing studies show that people ex-
pect to experience less change in their person-
alities and core values over the next decade than
people a decade older report having experienced
over the past decade. The analysis presented in
study 1 suggests that this discrepancy represents,
at least in part, an error of prediction and is not
merely an error of memory. T o provide further
support for this claim, in study 3 we examined
the end of history illusion in a domain in which
memory was likely to be highly reliable. Rather
than asking reporters to remember how extra-
verted they had been or how much they had once
valued honesty, we asked them to remember sim-
ple facts about their strongest preferences, such
as the name of their favorite musical band or
the name of their best friend. We reasoned that
if participants remembered having a different
best friend 10 years ago but expected to have
the same best friend 10 years from now, then this
was probably not due to a pervasive tendency
for people of all ages to actually keep their best
friends but mistakenly remember changing them.
To test this hypothesis, we recruited a new
sample of 7130 adults ranging from 18 to 68 years
old (M =40.2years,SD=11.1years,80%women)
through the same Web site and asked them to
report their favorite type of music, their favorite
type of vacation, their favorite type of food, their
favorite hobby, and the name of their best friend.
Participants were then randomly assigned either
to the reporter condition (and were asked to report
whether each of their current preferences was
the same as or dif ferent than it was 10 years ago) or
the predictor condition (and were asked to predict
whether each of their current preferences would be
the same or different 10 years from now). We then
counted the number of items on which participants
respon ded different and used this as a measure
of reported or predicted changes in preference.
We performed a regression analysis similar
to the ones performed in studies 1 and 2. First,
the analysis revealed an effect of decade (b =
0.14, P <0.001).Theolderparticipantswere,
the less change in preferences they reported or
predicted. Second, the analysis revealed the ex-
pected effect of condition (b = 0.19, P <0.001).
The bottom panel in Fig. 1 shows this end of
history illusion: Predictors aged a years pre-
dicted that their preferences would change less
over the next decade than reporters aged a +10
years reported that their preferenc es had changed
over the same decade. Finally, the analysis re-
vealed a decade × condition interaction (b =
0.07, P <0.001).Althoughthemagnitudeof
the end of history illusion decreased as partic-
ipants got older , it was nonetheless present even
in the oldest group of participants (aged 50 and
up) (b = 0.08, P <0.01).Furtherdiscussionofthis
decade × condition interaction can be found in
supplementary text 5, and additional details about
study 3 can be found in supplementary text 6.
The foregoing studies suggest that people
underestimate the extent to which their person-
alities, values, and preferences will change in the
future. In study 4, we sought to show that this
end of history illusion can have practical conse-
quences. Specifically, we sought to show that be-
cause people overestimate the stability of their
current preferences, they will overpay for future
opportunities to indulge them.
In study 4, we recruited a new sample of 170
adults ranging from 18 to 64 years old (M=
34.9 years, SD = 10.6 years, 52% women) through
the Amazon Mechanical Turk W e b site (8, 9).
Some participants were randomly assigned to
the future concert condition. These participants
were asked to name their current favorite musical
band and then to report the maximum amount
of money they thought they would be willing
to pay today in order to see that band perform in
10 years. Other participants were randomly as-
signed to the present concert condition. These
par t i c i p ant s we r e as k e d to na m e th e mu s i c a l ba n d
that was their favorite 10 years ago and then to
report the amount of money that they thought
they would be willing to pay today to see that
band perform in the coming week.
We performed a regression analysis similar to
the ones performed in studies 1, 2, and 3. First,
the analysis revealed the expected effect of con-
dition (b =0.16,P <0.05).Participantsageda
years thought they would pay 61% more to
see their current favorite band perform 10 years
in the future (M =$129)thanparticipantsaged
a +10yearsthoughttheywouldpaytoseetheir
once-favorite band perform in the present (M =
$80). The analysis revealed no effect of decade
(b = 0.06, P =0.41),indicatingthattheprice
participants thought they would pay did not vary
with age, and no decade × condition interaction
(b =0.01,P =0.94),indicatingthatwillingness
to pay more for a future concert than a present
concert did not diminish in magnitude as partic-
ipants got older . In short, participants substantial-
ly overpaid for a future opportunity to indulge a
current preference.
Across six studies of more than 19,000 par-
ticipants, we found consistent evidence to indi-
cate that people underestimate how much they
will change in the future, and that doing so can
lead to su bop tim al de cis ion s. Al thoug h th e se da ta
cannot tell us what causes the end of history
illusion, two possibilities seem likely. First, most
people believe that their personalities are attract-
ive, their values admirable, and their preferences
wise (10); and having reached that exalted state,
they may be reluctant to entertain the possibilit y
of change. People also like to believe that they
know themselves well (11), and the possibility
of future change may threaten that belief. In short,
people are motivated to think well of themselves
and to feel secure in that understanding, and th e
end of history illusion may help them accomplish
these goals.
Second, there is at least one important differ-
ence between the cognitive processes that allow
people to look forward and backward in time
(12). Prospection is a constructive process, ret -
rospection is a reconstructive process, and con-
structing new things is typically more difficult
than reconstructing old ones (13, 14). The reason
this matters is that people often draw inferences
from the ease with which they can remember or
imagine (15, 16). If people find it difficult to
imagine the ways in which their traits, values, or
preferences will change in the future, they may
assume that such changes are unlikely. In short,
people may confuse the difficulty of imagining
personal change with the unlikelihood of change
itself.
Although the magnitude of this end of his-
tory illusion in some of our studies was greater
for younger people than for older people, it was
nonetheless evident at every stage of adult life
that we could analyze. Both teenagers and grand-
parents seem to believe that the pace of personal
change has slowed to a crawl and that they have
recently become the people they will remain.
History, it seems, is always ending today.
References and Notes
1. S. D. Gosling, P. J. Rentfrow, W. B. Swann Jr., J. Res. Pers.
37,504(2003).
2. B. W. Roberts, K. E. Walton, W. Viechtbauer, Psychol. Bull.
132, 1 (2006).
3. M. E. Lachman, S. L. Weaver, The Midlife Development
Inventory (MIDI) Personality Scales: Scale Construction
and Scoring (Brandeis U niver sity, Wa ltham, MA, 1997).
4. D. K. Mroczek, C. M. Kolarz, J. Pers. Soc. Psychol. 75,
1333 (1998).
5. K. M. Prenda, M. E. Lachman, Psychol. Aging 16,206(2001).
6. K. O. McGraw, S. P. Wong, Psychol. Methods 1,30(1996).
7. S. H. Schwartz, in Advances in Experimental Social
Psychology,M.P.Zanna,Ed.(AcademicPress,Orlando,
FL, 1992), vol. 25, pp. 165.
8. G. Paolacci, J. Chandler, P. G. Ipeirotis, Judgm. Decis. Mak.
5,411(2010).
9. M. Buhrmester, T. Kwang, S. D. Gosling, Perspect.
Psychol. Sci. 6,3(2011).
10. C. Sedikides, M. D. Alicke, in The Oxford Handbook of
Human Motivation, R. M. Ryan, Ed. (Oxford Univ. Press,
Oxford), pp. 303322.
11. W. B. Swann Jr., in Handbook of Theories of Social
Psychology, P. Van Lang, A. Kruglanski, E. T. Higgins, Eds.
(Sage, London, 2012), pp. 2342.
12. D. R. Addis, A. T. Wong, D. L. Schacter, Neuropsychologia
45,1363(2007).
13. M. D. Robinson, G. L. Clore, Psychol. Bull. 128,934(2002).
14. M. Ross, Psychol. Rev. 96,341(1989).
15. N. Schwarz et al., J. Pers. Soc. Psychol. 61,195(1991).
16. A. Tversky, D. Kahneman, Cognit. Psychol. 5,207(1973).
Acknowledgments: We acknowledge the support of Research
Grant BCS-0722132 from NSF to D.T.G. and T.D.W. Raw
data from all studies are on deposit at the Inter-university
Consortium for Political and Social Research (deposit no. 32668)
and can be accessed at www.icpsr.umich.edu.
Supplementary Materials
www.sciencemag.org/cgi/content/full/339/6115/96/DC1
Supplementary Text
Table S1
24 August 2012; accepted 16 November 2012
10.1126/science.1229294
4JANUARY2013 VOL339 SCIENCE www.sciencemag.org98
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on January 3, 2013www.sciencemag.orgDownloaded from
www.sciencemag.org/cgi/content/full/339/6115/96/DC1
Supplementary Materials for
The End of History Illusion
Jordi Quoidbach, Daniel T. Gilbert,* Timothy D. Wilson
*To whom correspondence should be addressed. E-mail: gilbert@wjh.harvard.edu
Published 4 January 2013, Science 339, 96 (2012)
DOI: 10.1126/science.1229294
This PDF file includes:
Supplementary Text
Table S1
Quoidbach, Gilbert, & Wilson / The End of History Illusion / Page 1
Supplementary Materials
1. “Leurs Secrets du Bonheur” (“Their Secrets of Happiness”) is a French television show that
aired on the channel France 2 from October 2011 to January 2012. It invited viewers to
participate in social science studies at the show’s website. We received permission to place a
link to our studies on that website. Participants who clicked that link were assigned to one of
our studies. Participants were given no financial compensation but were told before
participating that they would receive feedback about their levels of wellbeing when the study
was complete. Participants in Study 1, the follow-ups to Study 1, Study 2, and Study 3 were
recruited via this method. Participants in Study 4 were recruited through the Amazon
Mechanical Turk website.
2. During a first wave of data collection in November, 2011, participants who clicked our link
were randomly assigned to participate in Study 1, a follow-up to Study 1, or Study 3. During
a second wave of data collection in January, 2012, participants who clicked our link were
randomly assigned to participate in a follow-up to Study 1 or Study 2.
3. In addition to the measures described in the manuscript, participants in Study 1, the follow-
ups to Study 1, Study 2, and Study 3 completed numerous other questionnaires for other
research projects (e.g., measures of satisfaction with life, depression, political orientation,
income, etc.).
4. For clarity of presentation, we applied a Gaussian filter to smooth short-term fluctuations and
highlight longer-term trends in Figure 1. A Gaussian filter replaces each value with the
weighted average of neighboring values, and those weights are defined by a Gaussian
function. We set the standard deviation of the Gaussian function to 4 years—with repetition
of the values at both extremities to avoid edge effects—meaning that all low-frequency
fluctuations within a four-year period were smoothed. Figure S1 shows the unfiltered data.
Quoidbach, Gilbert, & Wilson / The End of History Illusion / Page 2
To allow visual comparison of the results across studies, change scores in each study were
transformed into percentages of change. So a score of 100% means the highest possible
change score—that is, going from one extreme of the rating scale to the other for all the
personality traits (Study 1), all the values (Study 2), or indicating that all of one’s preferences
will be different (Study 3). Scores of 0% indicates no change.
5. In Studies 2 and 3—but not in Study 1—the magnitude of the end of history illusion was
larger among younger than older participants. Did the illusion merely diminish among older
participants or did it actually disappear? In all three studies, the illusion was evident when
we analyzed the data from our oldest participants as a group (i.e., predictors who were 50
years and older and reporters who were 60 years and older). Unfortunately, our samples did
not contain a sufficient number of older participants to allow us to conduct meaningful
analyses on participants at every age (see Table S1). More research will be needed to
determine whether the illusion does or does not disappear at the very upper end of the age
continuum.
6. In Study 3, the five preferences questions were originally scored on a 4-point scale from 1
(Certainly the same) to 4 (Certainly different). Although results using this continuous
measure were significant ( condition = -.06, p < .001), we dichotomized the response scale
for the sake of clarity. Also, in addition to asking participants about music, vacations, food,
hobbies, and best friends, we also asked about their favorite movie. We eliminated this item
from the analyses reported in the manuscript because more than 200 participants failed to
complete it, suggesting that people do not find it easy to remember their favorite movie from
a decade ago. In comparison, every participant completed every other item. Including this
item in the analyses reported in the manuscript does not change the significance of the result
( condition = -.12, p < .001).
7. More than 80% of the participants in Study 1, Study 2, and Study 3 were women, so we also
Quoidbach, Gilbert, & Wilson / The End of History Illusion / Page 3
performed regression analyses on men and women separately to ensure that the results were
not limited to a single gender. These analyses revealed an end of history illusion for both
genders. Specifically, analyses of men revealed an effect of condition in Study 1, Study 2,
and Study 3 ( = -.20, p < .001, = -.39, p < .001, and = -.14, p < .001, respectively), and
analyses of women revealed an effect of condition in Study 1, Study 2, and Study 3 ( = -.12,
p < .001, = -.48, p < .001, and = -.20, p < .001, respectively).
The End of History Illusion - 4 -
Table S1. Number of participants (N) by age and condition.
Study 1 Study 2 Study 3 Study 4
Age
Reporters
N
Predictor
N
Reporters
N
Predictor
N
Reporters
N
Predictor
N
Reporters
N
Predictor
N
18 66 82 33 1
19 71 94 27 3
20 96 91 42 4
21 79 109 33 4
22 65 85 44 4
23 91 104 54 11
24 116 95 43 7
25 108 116 55 3
26 90 89 29 3
27 98 79 40 4
28 98 104 105 105 55 54 4 3
29 115 103 101 101 58 38 4 5
30 116 134 141 141 55 56 3 5
31 107 111 123 123 48 63 6 3
32 119 105 123 123 52 52 4 2
33 119 112 127 127 53 59 2 5
34 87 112 122 122 52 57 2 2
35 128 113 97 97 48 48 6 3
36 108 121 120 120 51 49 2 1
37 122 120 110 110 45 51 2 2
38 118 102 136 136 56 54 1 2
39 115 111 126 126 53 51 3 3
40 111 104 109 109 60 47 5 2
41 89 103 110 110 39 45 1 1
42 88 104 103 103 38 58 4 2
43 85 99 101 101 30 31 1 0
44 93 82 96 96 28 41 0 2
45 98 121 97 97 35 34 2 1
46 82 87 105 105 49 39 2 1
47 93 86 87 87 29 30 0 1
48 111 108 83 83 38 32 0 2
49 85 102 87 87 27 27 1 1
50 80 99 86 86 39 34 2 0
51 76 73 75 75 30 23 3 1
52 79 81 71 71 30 33 0 2
53 83 66 84 84 32 26 0 1
54 80 69 76 76 20 20 3 1
55 75 72 66 66 23 20 3 0
The End of History Illusion - 5 -
56 60 68 58 58 12 19 0 0
57 46 54 70 70 14 17 0 0
58 66 50 49 49 17 20 1 1
59 43 44 18 1
60 67 66 16 0
61 44 51 20 1
62 33 55 15 1
63 42 34 8 0
64 36 52 6 1
65 34 33 4 0
66 16 20 4 0
67 14 18 8 0
68 13 15 2 0
... TRANSFORMATIVE LIFE DECISIONS Paul, 2014;Zimmerman & Ullman, 2020). To the extent that these accounts make descriptive claims, they typically assume that people making transformative life decisions rely on mental simulations of what a decision's outcomes would feel like (although to no avail, according to Paul, 2014; see also Quoidbach et al., 2013;Wilson & Gilbert, 2005). Empirical evidence supporting the use of mental simulation in decision making, however, is lacking. ...
... Similarly, focusing on specific aspects of life (e.g., income, marriage, health) can exaggerate their contribution to overall happiness (e.g., Kahneman et al., 2006) and cause discrepancies between the predicted value and the reality of the outcomes experienced. People may also overestimate the stability of their personal identity and underestimate how much they are about to change (Quoidbach et al., 2013) or attribute these predicted changes to the environment. Empirical data on outcomes such as divorce rates (which doubled in the EU between 1964 and 2022; Eurostat, 2024), college dropout (around one third of college students in the United States never graduate; Leonhardt & Chinoy, 2019), and life satisfaction (which is lower in immigrants than in natives; Bobowik et al., 2011;J. ...
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Research on judgment and decision making typically studies “small worlds”—highly simplified and stylized tasks such as monetary gambles—among homogenous populations rather than big real-life decisions made by people around the globe. These transformative life decisions (e.g., whether or not to emigrate or flee a country, disclose one’s sexual orientation, get divorced, or report a sexual assault) can shape lives. This article argues that rather than reducing such consequential decisions to fit small-world models, researchers need to analyze their real-world properties. Drawing on principles of bounded and ecological rationality, it proposes a framework that identifies five dimensions of transformative life decisions: conflicting cues, change of self, uncertain experiential value, irreversibility, and risk. The framework also specifies simple, versatile choice strategies that address these dimensions by, for instance, breaking down a decision into steps, avoiding trade-offs between present and future selves, or sampling others’ experiences. Finally, it suggests benchmarks for assessing the rationality of transformative life decisions. Methodologically, this framework adapts a long tradition of mainly lab-based judgment and decision-making research to a text-based approach, thereby setting the stage for empirical work that analyzes real-world decisions using natural-language processing. Only by understanding decisions with the potential to transform life trajectories—and people in the process—will it be possible to develop encompassing and inclusive theories of human decision making.
... 5 First, individuals change over time and often change their preferences, values and priorities, which highlights the importance of preserving choice for the future (Carter 1999: 50-54). Interestingly, people typically underestimate how much their current self will change (Quoidbach et al. 2013). We have good reasonand better reason than we thinkto keep future choices rather than irreversibly commit to things our future selves might not want, value or enjoy. ...
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In institutional design, public policy and for society as a whole, securing freedom of choice for individuals is important. But how much choice should we aim for? Various theorists argue that above some level more choice improves neither wellbeing nor autonomy. Worse still, psychology research seems to suggest that too much choice even makes us worse off. Such reasons suggest the Sufficiency View: increasing choice is only important up to some sufficiency level, a level that is not too far from the level enjoyed by well-off citizens in rich liberal countries today. I argue that we should reject the Sufficiency View and accept Liberal Optimism instead: expanding freedom of choice should remain an important priority even far beyond levels enjoyed in rich liberal countries today. I argue that none of the arguments given for the Sufficiency View work. Neither psychological evidence nor any broader social trends support it. If anything, they support Liberal Optimism instead. I also show why further increases are possible and desirable, and sketch some implications for debates around immigration, economic growth, markets and the value of community.
... Some such effects are posited to be motivated, like the "new parent" experiment. Likewise, the "end of history illusion" refers to the finding that people across ages tend to underestimate how much they will continue changing in the future relative to how much they report having changed from the equidistant past (Quoidbach et al., 2013)with the main mechanism posited to be that people count favorable (vs. unfavorable) evidence of past change as higher quality ("First, most people believe that their personalities are attractive, their values admirable, and their preferences wise; and having reached that exalted state, they may be reluctant to entertain the possibility of change": Quoidbach et al., 2013, p. 98). ...
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I propose a flexible threshold theory of change perception in self and social judgment. Traditionally, change perception is viewed as a basic cognitive process entailing the act of discriminating informational differences. This article takes a more dynamic view of change perception, highlighting people’s motivations in interpreting those differences. Specifically, I propose people’s change perceptions depend not only on the salience and quality of the evidence for change but they also depend on the adaptation implications of the change, as people are sensitive to whether their prompted response would be worth it. Variables that exacerbate perceived adaptation implications should thus lead people to contract their change perception thresholds (people should become less open to concluding things have changed and so less likely to act), while variables that alleviate perceived adaptation implications should thus lead people to expand their change perception thresholds (people should become more open to concluding things have changed and so more likely to act), all else equal in the evidence. Moreover, these effects should emerge for perceiving declines and improvements alike so long as change bears on adaptation implications. I review support for these proposals and use the theory to generate novel predictions, contributions, and applications. The theory can explain anew why people respond (or fail to respond) to changing climates and economies, worsening personal health, growing social progress, and many other self and social phenomena. Change perception is more than an act of discriminating differences—it also entails people’s threshold judgments of whether and how these differences matter.
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Patients whose illness and frailty are severe enough to render them homebound are usually dependent on others for care. Individual autonomy is often restricted by financial and social limitations. The determination of capacity is extremely complex, and in many cases no gold standard can be used to make objective decisions about the presence or absence of capacity. Lines of legal responsibility are often unclear or absent, making the designation of neglect difficult. Such relationships are often under a good deal of stress, and many have an extensive and disputed history. Abuse is essentially a criminal charge, a very serious allegation likely to disrupt relationships among patient, caregiver, and medical professional. Decision-making about life-sustaining treatment can be complex, especially when a patient’s capacity is in doubt or clearly lacking. Advance directives are imperfect tools that attempt to preserve the voice of a person who is no longer able to speak meaningfully about life and death choices. Their definitions, regulations, and nomenclature vary from jurisdiction to jurisdiction. Home-based medical clinicians must routinely make sophisticated judgments about (1) whether the patient (and sometimes the surrogate) has decisional capacity, (2) whether current arrangements are illegal and could be improved by legal intervention, and (3) how best to honor the patient as a person when suffering and other burdens are rising and prognosis and other benefits are falling. Social isolation (having sparse social networks) and loneliness (feeling that social interactions are insufficient) are associated with functional disability, dementia, depression, homebound status, markers of immunity and inflammation, and death (Jawaid, Science 368(6487):145, 2020). The associations are highly confounded, and there is little evidence that the association is causal.
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Chapter 3 explains that what we do is not the totality of who we are. Our professional identity is shaped and re-shaped by our shifting beliefs and values. This level of heightened self-awareness helps us to make choices that are aligned with our values, creating a greater sense of self-fulfillment and life satisfaction. We list a variety of self-awareness assessment tools you can explore on your own. We also describe emotional intelligence (EI) theory and point to additional online EI assessment tools. These tools can help you to know and articulate your life’s purpose, vision, and mission. The chapter ends with an endorsement of coaching.
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Over the last decade, there has been a drive to emphasize professional identity formation in medical education. This shift has had important and positive implications for the education of physicians. However, the increasing recognition of longstanding structural inequalities within society and the profession has highlighted how conceptualizations of professional identity formation have also had unintended harmful consequences. These include experiences of identity threat and exclusion, and the promotion of norms and values that over-emphasize the preferences of culturally dominant groups. In this paper, the authors put forth a reconceptualization of the process of professional identity formation in medicine through the elaboration of 3 schematic representations. Evolutions in the understandings of professional identity formation, as described in this paper, include re-defining socialization as an active process involving critical engagement with professional norms, emphasizing the role of agency, and recognizing the importance of belonging or exclusion on one’s sense of professional self. The authors have framed their analysis as an evidence-informed educational guide with the aim of supporting the development of identities which embrace diverse ways of being, becoming, and belonging within the profession, while simultaneously upholding the standards required for the profession to meet its obligations to patients and society.
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The study examined the social, personality, and cognitive correlates of self-reported future planning and the relationship of future planning to perceived control and life satisfaction. Using 2 probability samples of adults ages 25–74 (n¹ = 2,971, n² = 300) findings suggest, for Study 1, that education, income, social support, predictability, Conscientiousness, and Openness to Experience were positively related to future planning, whereas Neuroticism and Agreeableness were negatively related. Men were more future oriented; as age increased, future planning decreased. Study 2 replicated the findings with the exception of age, Agreeableness, and Neuroticism. For both studies, results supported a model in which the effects of future planning on life satisfaction were mediated by sense of control. A Planning × Age interaction for Study 1 indicated that although self-reported future planning decreased with age, the positive effects of future-oriented planning strategies on life satisfaction were most pronounced for the older adults, and this relationship was also mediated by control beliefs.
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The effect of age on happiness, as defined by positive and negative affect, was examined in a survey of 2,727 persons of a broad age range (25–74) conducted by the MacArthur Foundation Research Network on Successful Midlife Development. The age–affect association was examined, controlling for a host of sociodemographic, personality, and contextual influences. Among women, age was related to positive affect nonlinearly but was unrelated to negative affect. Among men, age interacted with 2 key variables in predicting affect: extraversion and marital status. These findings lend support to recent life span theories of emotion and indicate that personality, contextual, and sociodemographic variables, as well as their interactions, are all needed to fully understand the age–affect relationship.
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Experienced ease of recall was found to qualify the implications of recalled content. Ss who had to recall 12 examples of assertive (unassertive) behaviors, which was difficult, rated themselves as less assertive (less unassertive) than subjects who had to recall 6 examples, which was easy. In fact, Ss reported higher assertiveness after recalling 12 unassertive rather than 12 assertive behaviors. Thus, self-assessments only reflected the implications of recalled content if recall was easy. The impact of ease of recall was eliminated when its informational value was discredited by a misattribution manipulation. The informative functions of subjective experiences are discussed.
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The Oxford Handbook of Human Motivation, Second Edition, addresses key advances made in the field since the previous edition, offering the latest insights from the top theorists and researchers of human motivation. The volume includes chapters on social learning theory, control theory, self-determination theory, terror management theory, and regulatory focus theory and also presents articles from leading scholars on phenomena such as ego depletion, choice, curiosity, flow, implicit motives, and personal interests. A special section dedicated to goal research highlights achievement goals, goal attainment, goal pursuit and unconscious goals, and the goal orientation process across adulthood. The volume sheds new light on the biological underpinnings of motivation, including chapters on neuropsychology and cardiovascular dynamics. This resource is also packed with practical research and guidance, with sections on relationships and applications in areas such as psychotherapy, education, physical activity, sport, and work. By providing reviews of the most advanced work by the very best scholars in this field, this volume represents an invaluable resource for both researchers and practitioners, as well as any student of human nature.
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This review organizes a variety of phenomena related to emotional self-report. In doing so, the authors offer an accessibility model that specifies the types of factors that contribute to emotional self-reports under different reporting conditions. One important distinction is between emotion, which is episodic, experiential, and contextual, and beliefs about emotion, which are semantic, conceptual, and decontextualized. This distinction is important in understanding the discrepancies that often occur when people are asked to report on feelings they are currently experiencing versus those that they are not currently experiencing. The accessibility model provides an organizing framework for understanding self-reports of emotion and suggests some new directions for research.
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AIthough intraclass correlation coefficients (lCCs) are commonIy used in behavioral measurement, pychometrics, and behavioral genetics, procodures available for forming inferences about ICC are not widely known. Following a review of the distinction between various forms of the ICC, this article presents procedures available for calculating confidence intervals and conducting tests on ICCs developed using data from one-way and two-way random and mixed-efFect analysis of variance models. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2012 APA, all rights reserved)
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It is hypothesized that people possess implicit theories regarding the inherent consistency of their attributes, as well as a set of principles concerning the conditions that are likely to promote personal change or stability. The nature of these theories is discussed in the context of a study of beliefs about life-span development. It is then suggested that people use their implicit theories of self to construct their personal histories. This formulation is used to interpret the results of a wide-ranging set of studies of memory of personal attributes. It is concluded that implicit theories of stability and change can lead to biases in recall. The extent and practical implications of these biases are discussed. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2012 APA, all rights reserved)
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Publisher Summary This chapter addresses the universals in the content and structure of values, concentrating on the theoretical advances and empirical tests in 20 countries, and its four basic issues: substantive contents of human values; identification of comprehensive set of values; extent to which the meaning of particular values was equivalent for different groups of people; and how the relations among different values was structured. Substantial progress has been made toward resolving each of these issues. Ten motivationally distinct value types that were likely to be recognized within and across cultures and used to form value priorities were identified. Set of value types that was relatively comprehensive, encompassing virtually all the types of values to which individuals attribute at least moderate importance as criteria of evaluation was demonstrated. The evidence from 20 countries was assembled, showing that the meaning of the value types and most of the single values that constitute them was reasonably equivalent across most groups. Two basic dimensions that organize value systems into an integrated motivational structure with consistent value conflicts and compatibilities were discovered. By identifying universal aspects of value content and structure, the chapter has laid the foundations for investigating culture-specific aspects in the future.
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Reports 3 errors in the original article by K. O. McGraw and S. P. Wong (Psychological Methods, 1996, 1[1], 30–46). On page 39, the intraclass correlation coefficient (ICC) and r values given in Table 6 should be changed to r = .714 for each data set, ICC(C,1) = .714 for each data set, and ICC(A,1) = .720, .620, and .485 for the data in Columns 1, 2, and 3 of the table, respectively. In Table 7 (p. 41), which is used to determine confidence intervals on population values of the ICC, the procedures for obtaining the confidence intervals on ICC(A,k) need to be amended slightly. Corrected formulas are given. On pages 44–46, references to Equations A3, A,4, and so forth in the Appendix should be to Sections A3, A4, and so forth. (The following abstract of this article originally appeared in record 1996-03170-003.). Although intraclass correlation coefficients (ICCs) are commonly used in behavioral measurement, psychometrics, and behavioral genetics, procedures available for forming inferences about ICC are not widely known. Following a review of the distinction between various forms of the ICC, this article presents procedures available for calculating confidence intervals and conducting tests on ICCs developed using data from one-way and two-way random and mixed-effect analysis of variance models. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2012 APA, all rights reserved)
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Amazon's Mechanical Turk (MTurk) is a relatively new website that contains the major elements required to conduct research: an integrated participant compensation system; a large participant pool; and a streamlined process of study design, participant recruitment, and data collection. In this article, we describe and evaluate the potential contributions of MTurk to psychology and other social sciences. Findings indicate that (a) MTurk participants are slightly more demographically diverse than are standard Internet samples and are significantly more diverse than typical American college samples; (b) participation is affected by compensation rate and task length, but participants can still be recruited rapidly and inexpensively; (c) realistic compensation rates do not affect data quality; and (d) the data obtained are at least as reliable as those obtained via traditional methods. Overall, MTurk can be used to obtain high-quality data inexpensively and rapidly. © The Author(s) 2011.