One of the best ways to answer important questions

I was driving home recently listening to my car radio and PBS had a report on a new study by Harvard psychology professor Daniel T. Gilbert. He had been wondering, or so PBS said, "Am I going to keep changing as I grow older?" He initially didn't think so, but designed a study to determine if others also had the same point of view. Rather than run a ten year project, and see if self-prediction of coming changes (or lack thereof), is accurate, he came up with a clever way around the time span needed. It caught my "ear," and I wanted to know more about the subject.

I got home and read about the same study in The New York Times the next morning. Their article was called "Why you won't be the person you expect to be" and was quite interesting. But I really wanted to see the published article itself.

So I tried to find it online in the journal Science and was only able to print an abstract (or I could have purchased the whole article for one day for $20 or subscribed for $115 as an emeritus). Neither of those options enthralled me. There had to be more than one way to skin that cat. So I googled the author's name, found his webpage and, lo and behold, he had a link to his publications including the entire article which apparently came out  in Science on January 4th, 2013. I decided this was an entirely legal way to be able to peruse the study and it's a fascinating one.

Gilbert and two professorial colleagues, Jordi Quoidbach and Timothy D. Wilson, looked, in multiple ways, at the preferences, values and personalities of a large group (>19,000) of young, mid-range and somewhat older adults ranging in age from 18 to 68. The researchers wondered why people often make decisions they later come to regret and thought one major cause may be that most of us think the person we are today is the same as the person we will be in five, ten or twenty years. We know we've changed a lot as we grew up, but we don't expect to do so in the future. Gilbert et al. think this adversely affects our decision-making and call the misconception the "End of History Illusion."

The three scientists did a series of studies comparing how adults at age X (e.g., 28), would complete a standardized Ten Item Personality Inventory as if they were ten years younger than their current age or how they thought they would answer if they were ten years older. The questionnaire measured personality in its five traits: extraversion-introversion, emotional stability, openness to new experiences, agreeableness and conscientiousness.They found that older study subjects, as expected, reported and predicted less personality change, but everyone thought they were now at a relatively stable stage in their personality growth.

A previously reported study had actually followed over 3,800 adults aged 20 to 75 over a ten year period (the MIDUS study, midlife development in the United States) looking at many parameters. One of those matched the personality aspect of Gilbert's study with similar findings.

In six subsets of study participants, the current article also examined predicted and reported changes in core values (ideals and principles) and preferences (likes and dislikes). The results? Ditto...we all think we've changed more then than we will in the future.

Our kids and grandkids can help us keep learning

Overall it was a superb study, well worth pondering; it may even alter the way I think about myself!

The chairman of Northwestern's Psychology Department, Dan P. McAdams is quoted in the NYT  article as saying, "The end-of-history effect may represent a failure in personal imagination." His own research is about personal narratives, stories we construct about our past and future lives.

I plan to read some of his work and write about it in my next post.