scholarly journals Personal identity, transformative experiences, and the future self

2020 ◽  
Author(s):  
Katja Crone
Keyword(s):  
Personal Identity ◽  
Transformative Experiences ◽  
The Future ◽  
Future Self

scholarly journals Potential Traits and Personal Identity

2019 ◽  
Author(s):  
Julian De Freitas ◽  
George Alvarez
Keyword(s):  
Personal Identity ◽  
Brain Damage ◽  
The Future ◽  
Future Self

Previous work suggests that an important factor that influences whether or not we personally identify with an imagined version of ourselves is whether it has a mind. But is personal identity simply a reflection of whether an agent currently has a mind, or does it also track whether it has the potential to have a mind in the future? In 6 experiments we find that participants are willing to identify with agents who are completely mindless—such as their imagined fetus or future self who suffers serious brain damage—provided they believe that these agents have this potential. We suggest that feelings of personal identity track not only mindhood but potential mindhood, and that in some cases potential wins out.

The Role of Tradeoff Salience and Connectedness to the Future Self

2011 ◽  
Author(s):  
Daniel Bartels ◽  
Oleg Urminsky ◽  
Shane Frederick
Keyword(s):  
The Future ◽  
Future Self

Pathways to Success Through Identity-Based Motivation

2015 ◽  
Author(s):  
Daphna Oyserman
Keyword(s):  
The Self ◽  
The Core ◽  
Very Young Children ◽  
The Future ◽  
Identity Based ◽  
Future Self ◽  
Fidelity Measures ◽  
The Individual ◽  
Taking Action ◽  
Minimal Effort

Everyone can imagine their future self, even very young children, and this future self is usually positive and education-linked. To make progress toward an aspired future or away from a feared future requires people to plan and take action. Unfortunately, most people often start too late and commit minimal effort to ineffective strategies that lead their attention elsewhere. As a result, their high hopes and earnest resolutions often fall short. In Pathways to Success Through Identity-Based Motivation Daphna Oyserman focuses on situational constraints and affordances that trigger or impede taking action. Focusing on when the future-self matters and how to reduce the shortfall between the self that one aspires to become and the outcomes that one actually attains, Oyserman introduces the reader to the core theoretical framework of identity-based motivation (IBM) theory. IBM theory is the prediction that people prefer to act in identity-congruent ways but that the identity-to-behavior link is opaque for a number of reasons (the future feels far away, difficulty of working on goals is misinterpreted, and strategies for attaining goals do not feel identity-congruent). Oyserman's book goes on to also include the stakes and how the importance of education comes into play as it improves the lives of the individual, their family, and their society. The framework of IBM theory and how to achieve it is broken down into three parts: how to translate identity-based motivation into a practical intervention, an outline of the intervention, and empirical evidence that it works. In addition, the book also includes an implementation manual and fidelity measures for educators utilizing this book to intervene for the improvement of academic outcomes.

scholarly journals When time becomes personal. Aging and personal identity

2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Christian Sternad
Keyword(s):  
Social Norms ◽  
Personal Identity ◽  
Physical Process ◽  
Phenomenological Analysis ◽  
Human Existence ◽  
Phenomenological Method ◽  
The Social ◽  
Future Self ◽  
Social Level

AbstractAging is an integral part of human existence. The problem of aging addresses the most fundamental coordinates of our lives but also the ones of the phenomenological method: time, embodiment, subjectivity and intersubjectivity, and even the social norms that grow into the very notion of aging as such. In my article, I delineate a phenomenological analysis of aging and show how such an analysis connects with the debate concerning personal identity: I claim that aging is not merely a physical process, but is far more significantly also a spiritual one as the process of aging consists in our awareness of and conscious relation to our aging. This spiritual process takes place on an individual and on a social level, whereas the latter is the more primordial layer of this experience. This complicates the question of personal identity since it will raise the question in two ways, namely who I am for myself and who I am for the others, and in a further step how the latter experience shapes the former. However, we can state that aging is neither only physical nor only spiritual. It concerns my bodily processes as it concerns the complex reflexive structure that relates my former self with my present and even future self.

A Discriminative Ontology for Future Selves

2021 ◽  
Vol 30 (4) ◽  
pp. 372-381
Author(s):  
Juraj Odorčák ◽  
Keyword(s):  
Second Order ◽  
Practical Advantage ◽  
Future Selves ◽  
The Future ◽  
Future Self ◽  
The Right ◽  
Practical Feasibility

The article presents a critique of the commonly held assumption about the practical advantage of endurantism over perdurantism regarding the problem of future-directed self-concern of a person. The future-directed self-concern of a person crucially depends on the possibility of the right differentiation of diverging futures of distinct persons, therefore any theory of persistence that does not entail a special nonbranching relation of a person to only their future self seems to be counterintuitive or unrealistic for practical purposes of personal persistence. I argue that this pragmatic rationale about future-directed self-concern is equally challenging for both theories of persistence. Moreover, I indicate, that both of these theories fall and stand on the practical feasibility of hidden ontological presuppositions about specific second-order notions of concerns of persons for their future.

Letters to our Future Selves? High-Powered Replication Attempts Question Effects on Future Orientation, Delinquent Decisions, and Risky Investments

2020 ◽  
Vol 38 (6) ◽  
pp. 521-554
Author(s):  
Laura Quinten ◽  
Anja Murmann ◽  
Hanna A. Genau ◽  
Rafaela Warkentin ◽  
Rainer Banse
Keyword(s):  
Problem Behavior ◽  
Related Problem ◽  
Future Orientation ◽  
Self Control ◽  
Sample Sizes ◽  
Replication Studies ◽  
Future Selves ◽  
The Future ◽  
Future Self ◽  
Letter Task

Enhancing people's future orientation, in particular continuity with their future selves, has been proposed as promising to mitigate self-control–related problem behavior. In two pre-registered, direct replication studies, we tested a subtle manipulation, that is, writing a letter to one's future self, in order to reduce delinquent decisions (van Gelder et al., 2013, Study 1) and risky investments (Monroe et al., 2017, Study 1). With samples of n = 314 and n = 463, which is 2.5 times the original studies' sample sizes, the results suggested that the expected effects are either non-existent or smaller than originally reported, and/or dependent on factors not examined. Vividness of the future self was successfully manipulated in Study 2, but manipulation checks overall indicated that the letter task is not reliable to alter future orientation. We discuss ideas to integrate self-affirmation approaches and to test less subtle manipulations in samples with substantial, myopia-related self-control deficits.

Self-Control, Cooperation, and Intention’s Authority

2020 ◽  
pp. 315-333
Author(s):  
Lilian O’Brien
Keyword(s):  
Cooperative Behavior ◽  
Self Control ◽  
The Future ◽  
Future Self

In this chapter the author defends a novel view of the relationships among intention for the future, self-control, and cooperation. The author argues that when an agent forms an intention for the future she comes to regard herself as criticizable if she does not act in accordance with her intention. In contexts where the agent has inclinations that run contrary to her unrescinded intention, her disposition for reflexive criticism helps her to resist these inclinations. Such intentions have, the author argues, a built-in mechanism for exercising self-control. The author goes on to argue that this mechanism can also function as a mechanism for cooperative behavior. Agents are not just equipped to abide by plans for the future, they are also thereby equipped for exercising self-control and for cooperating.

How Personal Theories of the Self Shape Beliefs about Personal Continuity and Transformative Experience

2020 ◽  
pp. 52-72
Author(s):  
Sarah Molouki ◽  
Stephanie Y. Chen ◽  
Oleg Urminsky ◽  
Daniel M. Bartels
Keyword(s):  
Personal Identity ◽  
Experimental Work ◽  
Developmental Trajectory ◽  
The Self ◽  
Self Concept ◽  
Personal Change ◽  
Transformative Experience ◽  
Transformative Experiences ◽  
Over Time

This chapter summarizes experimental work exploring how individual beliefs about the personally disruptive character of transformative experiences are influenced by intuitive theories of what a self fundamentally is, at the current moment and over time. Judgments of disrupted personal identity are influenced by views of the causal centrality of a transformed trait to a person’s self-concept, with changes in more central features perceived as more disruptive to self-continuity. Furthermore, the type of change matters: unexpected or undesirable changes to personal features are viewed as more disruptive to self-continuity than changes that are consistent with a person’s expected developmental trajectory. The degree to which an individual considers a particular personal change to be disruptive will affect how he or she makes decisions about, reacts to, and copes with this experience.

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