How Does Foresight Affect Decisions?

3min Snip

00:00

Play full episode

Summary

Transcript

Episode notes

The ability to vividly imagine yourself in the future can influence decisions where outcomes play out only over time. One study found that a patient who couldn't imagine himself in the future discounted rewards and outcomes in the future normally. Other studies have shown that if you ask people to imagine future events while they're making these kinds of decisions, you can shift their discounting curve. This has led to some suggestions that maybe in order to make flexible decisions about time, you need the ability to imagine the future.

One of the most powerful of all human capacities is the ability to imagine ourselves in hypothetical situations at different times. We can remember the past, but also conjure up possible futures that haven’t yet happened. This simple ability underlies our capability to organize socially and make contracts with other people. Today’s guest, psychologist Adam Bulley, argues that it’s the primary feature that makes us recognizably human, as he argues in the new book The Invention of Tomorrow: A Natural History of Foresight (with Thomas Suddendorf and Jonathan Redshaw).

Support Mindscape on Patreon.

Adam Bulley received his Ph.D. in psychology from the University of Queensland. He is currently a postdoctoral fellow at the Brain and Mind Centre and School of Psychology, The University of Sydney, and the Department of Psychology at Harvard University.

See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.