Future Self-Dialogue and its Effect on Connectedness to a Future Self

Many people underrate how present sacrifices can affect future well-being and tend to prefer immediate benefits over delayed future rewards (Bartels & Urminsky, 2011). However, when connected to their future self, people were found to act in ways that would benefit them in the long run (Rutchick, Slepian, Reyes, Pleskus, & Hershfield, 2018). Therefore, we explored whether connectedness to a future self can be increased through interventions involving a future self-dialogue and compared the effect of these interventions. In a between-groups experimental design we randomly allocated a sample of university students (N = 45) to three conditions. Participants either interacted with their future self in virtual reality (VR), in empty-chair (EC), or they had no interaction in a control condition. No significant support was found for a future self-dialogue increasing connectedness as compared to no dialogue. This effect was also not stronger in VR compared to EC. However, despite non-statistically significance, there was a tendency observed that on average connectedness to a future self increased the greatest in VR. Hence, the results suggest investigating whether a larger sample size and improving the research design, by adding more cues and embellishment, will further improve the virtual future self-dialogue experience.