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Open AccessJournal ArticleDOI

Saving for your future self: The role of imaginary experiences

TLDR
This article explored the possibility that a basic component of mental imagery, spatial visual perspective, may be an important determinant of people's decisions to spend now or save for the future and found that rates of saving were enhanced when a distant-future event was generated from a third-person vs. first-person vantage point, an effect mediated by visual bodily awareness during mental imagery.
Abstract
Despite increased longevity, many people fail to save the funds necessary to support their retirement. In an attempt both to elucidate and remedy this failing, research exploring the “future-self continuity” hypothesis has revealed that temporal discounting is decreased and saving increased when connections between one’s current and future self are strengthened. Here, we explored the possibility that a basic component of mental imagery – spatial visual perspective – may be an important determinant of people’s decisions to spend now or save for the future. The results of two experiments supported this prediction. Rates of saving were enhanced when a distant-future event was generated from a third-person vs. first-person vantage point, an effect that was mediated by visual bodily awareness during mental imagery.

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The restless mind

TL;DR: Evidence suggests that mind wandering shares many similarities with traditional notions of executive control, and can be seen as a goal-driven process, albeit one that is not directed toward the primary task.
Journal Article

Saving For the Future Self: Neural Measures of Future Self-Continuity Predict Temporal Discounting

TL;DR: It is found that individual differences in current vs future self activation predicted temporal discounting assessed behaviorally a week after scanning, and these findings hold implications for significant financial decisions, such as choosing whether to save for the future or spend in the present.
Journal ArticleDOI

A test of a triadic conceptualization of future self-identification.

TL;DR: The research built on existing measures to test the validity of a three-component model of future self-identification and established the psychometric properties of the measure, and examined the relationships between the components and four outcome domains of interest.
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Imagining Events Alternative to the Present Can Attenuate Delay Discounting.

TL;DR: Compared to attending to the present, imagining the future reduced DD, but this only held for individuals who claimed vivid pre-experiencing of future events, suggesting that a shift in perspective from the perceptual present towards mentally constructed experience can downplay the appraisal of immediate rewards in favor of larger-delayed rewards, regardless of the location of the imagined experience in subjective time.
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Preschoolers' Saving Behavior: The Role of Planning and Self-Control

TL;DR: Planning and self-control were examined in relation to preschoolers' saving behavior and found that those who consistently budgeted at least one marble for the more desirable run were more likely to save.
References
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Journal ArticleDOI

The moderator–mediator variable distinction in social psychological research: Conceptual, strategic, and statistical considerations.

TL;DR: This article seeks to make theorists and researchers aware of the importance of not using the terms moderator and mediator interchangeably by carefully elaborating the many ways in which moderators and mediators differ, and delineates the conceptual and strategic implications of making use of such distinctions with regard to a wide range of phenomena.
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Self-discrepancy: a theory relating self and affect.

TL;DR: In this paper, the authors present a theory of how different types of discrepancies between self-state representations are related to different kinds of emotional vulnerabilities, and they predict that differences in both the relative magnitude and the accessibility of individuals' available types of self-discrepancies are predicted to be related to differences in the kinds of discomfort people are likely to experience.
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Time Discounting and Time Preference: A Critical Review

TL;DR: In this paper, the authors discuss the discounted utility (DU) model, its historical development, underlying assumptions, and "anomalies" -the empirical regularities that are inconsistent with its theoretical predictions.
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Construal-Level Theory of Psychological Distance

TL;DR: Supporting this analysis, research shows that the various distances are cognitively related to each other, that theySimilarly influence and are influenced by level of mental construal, and that they similarly affect prediction, preference, and action.
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Objectification Theory: Toward Understanding Women's Lived Experiences and Mental Health Risks:

TL;DR: In this article, the authors offer objectification theory as a framework for understanding the experiential consequences of being female in a culture that sexually objectifies the female body, and propose a framework to understand the effects of objectification on women.
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