Clock, by Jorge BarriosPeople often make decisions that they will regret later in life, from getting an embarrassing tattoo to spending too much money. Now, US scientists have found one reason behind these poor choices—a belief in personal stability.
Through several experiments involving thousands of volunteers, Jordi Quoidbach from Harvard University showed that people of all ages believe that they had changed a lot in the past but expect to change very little in the future.
This imagined psychological plateau, dubbed the “end of history illusion,” means that people “regard the present as a watershed moment at which they have finally become the person they will be for the rest of their lives,” Quoidbach wrote. As a result, we may overindulge our current preferences on the false assumption that we will be the same indefinitely.
“This is a fascinating finding with important implications for decision-making,” said Tali Sharot, a neuroscientist from University College London who studies optimism, and was not involved in the study. ...
