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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
... However, there are other plausible avenues of explanation. Although there are well-known asymmetries for perceiving self and other, there are also asymmetries and biases for perceiving the self in the past, present, and the future (Ersner-Hershfield, Wimmer, & Knutson, 2008;Quoidbach, Gilbert, & Wilson, 2013;Bartels & Urminsky, 2011), such that thinking about the self in a hypothetical thought experiment may not be the same as thinking about the self in the here and now. Moreover, many of the moral self studies to date have not used specified targets, and using a more concrete, known target might influence the results (see Everett, Skorburg, & Savulescu, 2020;Everett, Skorburg, Livingston, et al., unpublished manuscript). ...
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Philosophers and neuroscientists address central issues in both fields, including morality, action, mental illness, consciousness, perception, and memory. Philosophers and neuroscientists grapple with the same profound questions involving consciousness, perception, behavior, and moral judgment, but only recently have the two disciplines begun to work together. This volume offers fourteen original chapters that address these issues, each written by a team that includes at least one philosopher and one neuroscientist, who integrate disciplinary perspectives and reflect the latest research in both fields. Topics include morality, empathy, agency, the self, mental illness, neuroprediction, optogenetics, pain, vision, consciousness, memory, concepts, mind wandering, and the neural basis of psychological categories. The chapters first address basic issues about our social and moral lives: how we decide to act and ought to act toward each other, how we understand each other's mental states and selves, and how we deal with pressing social problems regarding crime and mental or brain health. The following chapters consider basic issues about our mental lives: how we classify and recall what we experience, how we see and feel objects in the world, how we ponder plans and alternatives, and how our brains make us conscious and create specific mental states. Contributors Sara Abdulla, Eyal Aharoni, Corey H. Allen, Sara Aronowitz, Jenny Blumenthal-Barby, Ned Block, Allison J. Brager, Antonio Cataldo, Tony Cheng, Felipe De Brigard, Rachel N. Denison, Jim A. C. Everett, Gidon Felsen, Julia Haas, Hyemin Han, Zac Irving, Kristina Krasich, Enoch Lambert, Cristina Leon, Anna Leshinskaya, Jordan L. Livingston, Brian Maniscalco, Joshua May, Joseph McCaffrey, Jorge Morales, Samuel Murray, Thomas Nadelhoffer, Laura Niemi, Brian Odegaard, Hannah Read, Robyn Repko Waller, Sarah Robins, Jason Samaha, Walter Sinnott-Armstrong, Joshua August Skorburg, Shannon Spaulding, Arjen Stolk, Rita Svetlova, Natalia Washington, Clifford Workman, Jessey Wright
... Decision making is impaired by inaccurate predictions about the way in which preferences, values and feelings change over time (Gilbert & Wilson, 2007). Among adults, there was a tendency to underestimate the extent of changes that often lead to projection bias and regrettable choices (Loewenstein & Angner, 2003;Quoidbach, Gilbert, & Wilson, 2013). In pre-schoolers, Bélanger, Atance, Varghese, Nguyen, and Vendetti (2014) designed a task to assess young children's prediction of changes in future preferences. ...
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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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