Will We Keep Changing?

Will we still love our favorite band in 10 years? Will we still value success? Will we still be as extroverted?

Now, think about a different question: How much have we already changed?

Do we still love the band we loved 10 years ago? Did we value success the same way? Were we just as extroverted back then?

Quoidbach, Gilbert, and Wilson (2013) found that people believe their preferences, values, and personalities have changed a lot in the past decade—but that these aspects of themselves will change very little in the next 10 years. In other words, people tend to believe that the current version of themselves is the one they’ll stay with for life.

The researchers call this phenomenon “the end of history illusion.”

How We Misjudge Our Future Selves

Using a dataset that tracked people’s personality changes over decades, the researchers found that people are pretty accurate when reporting past change—but they drastically underpredict how much they’ll change in the future.

Interestingly, the older people get, the less likely they are to say they’ll change in the next decade. This seems intuitive. What’s surprising, though, is that regardless of age, people report that they will change less in the next 10 years than they did in the previous 10.

In other words, it seems that both teenagers and grandparents seem to believe that the pace of personal change has slowed down finally and that they have recently become the version that they will remain for the rest of their lives. 

Funnily, people are willing to pay 61% more to see their current favorite band perform 10 years in the future (on average $129) than to see their favorite band 10 years ago perform today (on average $80).  This corresponds nicely to the fact that we underpredict how much our preferences will change in the future. 

Why Do We Fall for the Illusion?

First, we are motivated to view ourselves in a more positive light. We want to believe that we have improved through the ages and that the current version is the best version. "Why do we need to change if we are already so great?"

Second, reporting past change is easier—it’s based on memory. Predicting future change is harder—it’s based on imagination. And when it’s hard to imagine change, we may assume it won’t happen. “How could I possibly change if I can’t even picture it?”

In short, we will keep changing, and it is not necessarily a bad thing. 

As we’ve seen throughout this blog series, change comes in all forms—good, bad, and neutral. But change would be the only constant thing.