The Cognitive Mechanism Of Remembering Past Selves And Imaging Future Selves Effect On Intertemporal Choice

Intertemporal choices refer to decisions involving tradeoffs among costs and benefits occurring at different points in time(Frederick,Loewenstein,& O'donoghue,2002).Typically,Future outcomes are devalued as a function of delay and this process is referred to as temporal discounting or time discounting.Numerous studies have found that intertemporal choices are not only closely related to one's health and happiness but also to the country's prosperity,so the research has important significance.In recent years,the decision-maker factors of intertemporal choice that has become the focus of attention.Researches have found that the higher the future self-continuity,the more patient in intertemporal choices(D.M.Bartels & Rips,2010),and one can reduce time discounting rate by increasing the future self-continuity(Daniel,Stanton,& Epstein,2013;Hal e.Hershfield,2011).However,previous studies have only payed attention to future selves,ignored the influence on intertemporal choice of recalling past selves,no more investigate its cognitive mechanism of intertemporal choice.“Self” comes from past and development to the future,and both past and future selves influence our behaviors.So,it has great theory and practice value to investigate the cognitive mechanism of remembering past selves and imaging future selves effect on intertemporal choice.Studies have shown that remembering past selves may enhance the self-continuity and increase the self-control,and affect decision-making about one's future life direction(Bluck & Alea,2009;Bluck,Alea,Habermas,& Rubin,2005).Similarly,imaging future selves helps to increase future self-continuity,enhance self-control ability and the motivation of planning for the future(Atance & O 'Neill,2001;Ouellette,Hessling,Gibbons,Reis,Bergan & Gerrard,2005).Therefore,the study?will investigate how does remembering past selves and imaging future selves impact the intertemporal choice.Then,the study?will further investigate its cognitive mechanism.In study?,we investigate whether and how does remembering past selves and imaging future selves impact the intertemporal choice.We have measured future time perspective first.The study found that people view somebody as emotional or rational(O 'Brien,2015),so,in the second,participants should have completed the intertemporal choice tasks after randomly recalling past emotional selves and past rational selves,and randomly imaging future emotional selves and future rational selves.To eliminate the influence of time clues that is "past" and "future",we set up a control group,in which participants have recalled past others and imaged future others.The results showed that:(1),recalling past selves and imaging future selves reduced time discounting rate,and increased future self-continuity.And the degree of increase of future self-continuity was significantly positive correlation with decrease of time discounting.However,recalling past others and imaging future others did not affect time discounting rate.(2),after recalling past selves and imaging future selves,the degree of increase of future self-continuity and decrease of time discounting were significantly positive correlation with future time perspective.Further mediation analysis showed that future self-continuity had significant partial mediation effect between future time perspective and time discounting.In study?,we mainly focus on cognitive mechanism of recalling past selves and imaging future selves influence on intertemporal choice,namely its affect evaluation or self-control process of intertemporal choice.First of all,we have measured future time perspective.And then participants should have sequentially completed the intertemporal choice tasks and evaluation tasks after recalling past emotional selves,past rational selves,or imaging future emotional selves,future rational selves.Results showed that:(1),recalling past selves and imaging future selves reduced time discounting rate.(2),remembering past selves and imaging future selves not only significantly increased self-control ability,but also increased the evaluation of delay rewards.Overall,the study found that:(1)recalling past selves and imaging future selves could reduce time discounting rate;(2)the higher the future time perspective,the more of increase of future self-continuity and decrease of time discounting after remembering past selves and imaging future selves;(3)recalling past selves and imaging future selves reduced time discounting by increasing the self-control and the evaluation of delay rewards.This study combines intertemporal choice with characteristics of multiple temporal selves,and investigates how the recalling past selves and imaging future selves influence intertemporal choice and its cognitive mechanism,and reveals that influence on intertemporal choice of the inner dynamics of selves' development,which broaden the research scope of the field of intertemporal choice and provides scientific basis for theory research and behavior training of intertemporal choices.