The 'end of history' illusion and life choices

If you now look to the future, I'm sure you can picture some important landmark events, but you may be hard-pressed to imagine further transformation in your core characteristics. It is as if your sense of self has reached its final destination, and you assume you'll keep the same traits, values and interests that you have today.

"Although we recognise that we've evolved from who we once were to who we are now, we fail to see that we will continue to change in the future," notes the psychologist Hal Hershfield at the University of California, Los Angeles in his new book Your Future Self.

This bias is known as the "end-of-history illusion" and it can have many unfortunate consequences for our personal and professional lives.

The scientific study of the end-of-history illusion began with the Belgian TV show Leurs secrets du bonheur (Their Secrets of Happiness). As its name suggests, the programme dealt with the science of wellbeing, and viewers were often invited to participate in studies through the show's website.

Using this opportunity to reach a large audience, Jordi Quoidbach (who is now at Esade Ramon Llull University in Spain) and colleagues set up a series of questionnaires that asked participants to reflect on their past, present and future selves. They published their results in the journal Science.

The first study focused on personality, with the volunteers rating themselves on a series of characteristics. For example, on a scale of one (disagree strongly) to seven (agree strongly) they had to say whether they saw themselves as:

• Extraverted, enthusiastic
• Critical, quarrelsome
• Dependable, self-disciplined
• Anxious, easily upset
• Open to new experiences, complex

Half of the participants were then asked to imagine themselves answering the same questions 10 years in the past, or 10 years in the future. More than 7,500 participants responded, with ages ranging from 18 to 68 years. This allowed Quoidbach and his colleagues to measure how people perceive the trajectory of personal change at many different life stages. It would make sense, after all, that a recent graduate just embarking on adult life might view their journey very differently from someone who is nearing retirement.

In general, however, the age of the participants made little difference. While the average person noted considerable personality change in the past, they predicted experiencing little in the future. They seemed to think that their personality would remain frozen in its current form for the rest of their lives.

If you have ever been tattooed with a design that you later regretted, you won't be surprised to learn that the end-of-history illusion also extends to our personal tastes

To test whether the end of history illusion would extend to people's personal values, the researchers recruited a new sample of 2,700 participants, who were asked to state the importance of concepts such as hedonism, achievement, tradition in their lives – before imagining their responses 10 years in the past or 10 years in the future. Sure enough, the end-of-history illusion was in full force: people recognised how their values had shifted in the past but were unlikely to predict change in the future. 

If you have ever been tattooed with a design that you later regretted, you won't be surprised to learn that the end-of-history illusion also extends to our personal tastes. We can easily recognise how our musical preferences have evolved over the previous decades, for instance, but we assume that our current favourite acts will keep their special place in our hearts for ever.

"Both teenagers and grandparents seem to believe that the pace of personal change has slowed to a crawl and that they have recently become the people they will remain," the researchers concluded in their original paper. "History, it seems, is always ending today."

In his new book on self-concept, Hershfield links the end-of-history illusion to research on general over-confidence. "Most people like themselves, believing that their personalities are attractive to others and their values ones to be admired," he writes. "It can be scary to think that if we were to change, we'd be decamping from this noble place, so we try to hold on to who we are now."

The end-of-history illusion might also reduce troubling feelings of uncertainty, he proposes. "We like to think that we know ourselves well, and anticipating that our personalities, values and preferences might change can produce a measure of existential anxiety. If we don't know how we might be different in the future, how well do we actually know who we are today?"

The psychological comfort that this offers may sometimes come at a cost, however, if it skews our judgement for important life decisions. Hershfield suggests that the end-of-history illusion could lead us to put off enjoyable experiences until we no longer want them. If you yearn to travel, for example, you might constantly put off your plans until you have saved enough money to afford a luxury trip. By the time you've gathered all that money, however, you might have lost the yearning to explore new locations; the moment had passed. You might have been better to seize the day.

The psychological comfort may sometimes come at a cost, however, if it skews our judgement for important life decisions

More seriously, the end-of-history illusion could place us on career paths that fail to give us fulfilment in the long-term. You might have considered that a high salary was more important than inherent interest in the work you were doing – and that could well have been true at the time. When you reached your 30s, however, those values might have shifted – now you might be yearning for passion rather than an enormous pay packet. "Here's the problem: when faced with new career directions or job prospects, if we make mistakes in considering what we think will matter, we may opt to take (or not take) paths that we'll later regret," Hershfield notes.

So, while there's certainly nothing wrong with celebrating our "journey", we'd all do well to look a little more closely at the potential paths ahead. Change may be inevitable, and if we try a little harder to acknowledge that fact, we can make the most of our incredible capacity for growth.

David Robson