We Think We ’ve Changed More In The Past Than We Will Change In The Future — And Americans Seem Particularly Susceptible To This Illusion

By Emma Young Think about what you were like 10 years ago. How have you changed, in terms of values, life satisfaction and personality? Now picture yourself 10 years in the future. Do you think you’ll be just as different then as you were a decade in the past? When asked about past vs future change, most people — no matter what their age — report more change over a period of time in the past than they predict for the same period into the future. This “End of History Illusion” has been well-documented, at least, among WEIRD populations. Now Brian W. Haas at the University of Georgia, US, and Kazufumi Omura at Yamagata University, Japan, report some cultural differences in susceptibility to it. Their paper, in Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin, also provides some intriguing hints as to why those differences exist. In the first of two studies, Haas and Omura analysed existing data on around 5,000 middle-aged Japanese and American participants. Participants answered questions about their life satisfaction, family relationships, work situation, health and financial situation at three different time points: currently, 10 years in the past and predicted for 10 years in the future. The difference between a person’s level of reported past change and predicted future change became their End of History Illusion (EoHI) score.  The analysis showed that both the American and Japanese groups were susceptible to the illusion in relation to l...
Source: BPS RESEARCH DIGEST - Category: Psychiatry & Psychology Authors: Tags: Cross-cultural Illusions Time Source Type: blogs