WHO WILL YOU BE IN 10 YEARS?

Most of us acknowledge that our values, preferences, and personalities have changed quite a bit from a decade ago. But when asked to project 10 years into the future, a new Harvard University study has found, we assume we’ll be exactly the same, if a bit more wrinkled—what researchers are calling “the end of history illusion.” (click below to read more)


Psychologist Daniel Gilbert and colleagues surveyed more than 19,000 people between the ages of 18 and 68 and found that the vast majority were unable to imagine changing as much in the future as they readily admitted they had in the past. “All of us seem to have this sense that development is a process that has delivered us to this point and now we’re done,” Gilbert tells LiveScience.com. Younger people were particularly prone to believing that what they thought and valued now would hold true throughout their lives. “The end of history illusion” helps to explain why people get ill-advised tattoos, marry questionable partners, or make financial-planning decisions they come to regret. “People really aren’t very good at knowing who they’re going to be and hence what they’re going to want a decade from now,” Gilbert says. “At every age we think we’re having the last laugh, and at every age we’re wrong.”