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TED Talks Daily

(#1) Elise's Top Ten: The psychology of your future self | Dan Gilbert

with Dan Gilbert

Published September 20, 2025
View Show Notes

About This Episode

Host Elise Hu introduces TED Talks Daily's first curated playlist of her top 10 TED Talks and sets up a 2014 talk by Harvard psychologist Dan Gilbert. Gilbert explains the "end of history illusion," the tendency for people at any age to underestimate how much they will change in the future in their values, personalities, and preferences. He presents research evidence, illustrates how this illusion distorts long-term decisions, and concludes that change is the one constant in our lives.

Topics Covered

Decision making Identity Personal Development Time perception Perspective shift Narrative psychology Behavioral economics Preferences and values Personality change

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Quick Takeaways

  • People at every age tend to believe they have become the person they were meant to be and will remain essentially the same in the future.
  • Research shows that individuals consistently underestimate how much their values, personalities, and preferences will change over the next decade.
  • This "end of history illusion" leads people to make long-term decisions their future selves may regret, such as overpaying to indulge present-day tastes.
  • The illusion is fueled by the ease of remembering the past versus the difficulty of imagining a different future self.
  • Time is a powerful force that continually reshapes who we are, and the person we are now is just as temporary as all our past selves.

Podcast Notes

Introduction and playlist context

Host welcome and show format

Elise Hu introduces herself and the show[1:59]
• Elise Hu greets listeners with "Hey, everyone" and identifies herself as the host of TED Talks Daily.
• She explains that TED Talks Daily brings listeners new ideas to spark curiosity every day.
Volume of TED Talks shared over the years[2:12]
• Elise notes that almost every day for many years, the show has shared a TED Talk.
• She emphasizes that this amounts to thousands of talks over the years.

Emotional and intellectual impact of TED Talks on the host

Talks have moved Elise emotionally[2:10]
• Elise says the talks have made her laugh, cry, and even laugh and cry at the same time.
Talks have challenged Elise's thinking and taught her new things[2:26]
• She explains that the talks have pushed her to "think again" about ideas.
• They have also taught her new things and consistently inspired her.

Common listener question about favorite talks

Elise receives frequent questions about which talks stand out to her[2:45]
• She says that after all these years of hosting, one of the top questions she still gets is about her favorite talks.
• Listeners often ask which specific talks have stood out to her.

Introduction of the first TED Talks Daily playlist

Announcement of Elise's top 10 TED Talks playlist[2:45]
• Elise announces the first ever TED Talks Daily playlist.
• She explains that the playlist kicks off with a list of her top 10 TED Talks that listeners shouldn't miss.
Clarification that she has more than 10 favorites[2:54]
• Elise notes that she has more favorites than just ten, but they had to start somewhere.
• She emphasizes that these ten particularly stand out for her.

How the playlist is released and can be consumed

All ten talks are released at once[3:15]
• Elise explains that all ten of the talks in this playlist have been dropped on the feed at the same time.
Listeners can binge or return to them over time[3:05]
• She invites listeners to binge them all now or return to them on their own schedule.
• Elise notes that this is how she herself returns to talks.

Setup for Dan Gilbert's talk

Framing the first talk: looking inward

Introduction of the theme of introspection[3:15]
• Elise says they will kick off the playlist by looking inward.
• She notes that looking inward is where a lot of change begins.

Introduction of Dan Gilbert and his talk

Who Dan Gilbert is and his TED history[3:15]
• Elise introduces Harvard psychologist Dan Gilbert.
• She notes that he has given a few TED Talks over the years, all before her time as host of the show.
Title and core concept of the 2014 talk[3:22]
• Elise identifies the 2014 talk as being called "The Psychology of Your Future."
• She says the talk contains a concept she thinks about again and again and uses when offering advice to others.

Elise's summary of the talk's main idea

Our present self is not our future self[3:25]
• Elise summarizes the central idea: the person we think we are today is not the same as the person we will be five or ten years from now.
Preferences and personalities are not fixed[3:42]
• She highlights the notion that our preferences and personalities are not fixed, even though we sometimes believe they are.
Transition to Dan Gilbert's talk[3:15]
• Elise ends her introduction with "Here's Dan," leading into the recorded talk.

Dan Gilbert's talk: The psychology of your future self

The problem of future regret about past decisions

We make decisions that profoundly influence our future selves[3:58]
• Dan states that at every stage of life, people make decisions that will profoundly influence the lives of the people they are going to become.
• He notes that when people become these future selves, they are not always happy with the decisions they previously made.
Concrete examples of changing preferences and resulting regret[4:29]
• Dan gives the example of young people paying good money to get tattoos removed that teenagers previously paid good money to get.
• He describes middle-aged people rushing to divorce people whom young adults rushed to marry.
• He adds that older adults work hard to lose what middle-aged adults worked hard to gain.
Central question: why do we mispredict our future selves?[4:29]
• Dan frames his core psychological question: why do we make decisions that our future selves so often regret?

Misconception about the power of time

We know change slows, but we misunderstand when and how[4:43]
• Dan suggests one reason is a fundamental misconception about the power of time.
• He notes that everyone knows the rate of change slows over the human lifespan: children change quickly while parents change more slowly.
The imaginary "magical point" when change slows[4:53]
• Dan asks rhetorically what the name is for the magical point in life when change slows from a gallop to a crawl.
• He lists possibilities such as teenage years, middle age, or old age.
Perceived answer: change slows starting now[4:43]
• He says that for most people, the answer to when change slows is "now," wherever "now" happens to be.

The "end of history" illusion

Illusion that our personal history has just ended[5:16]
• Dan argues that we all walk around with an illusion that our personal history has just come to an end.
• We tend to believe we have just recently become the people we were always meant to be and will remain that way for the rest of our lives.
Study of change in personal values over time[5:31]
• Dan introduces data to back up his claim, beginning with a study of change in people's personal values over time.
• He notes that people know the balance of their values shifts as they age, though he does not list specific values here.
Research method: comparing predicted and reported change[5:50]
• Researchers asked thousands of people to participate.
• Half were asked to predict how much their values would change in the next 10 years.
• The other half were asked to report how much their values had changed in the last 10 years.
Analytical approach: pairing age groups across decades[6:04]
• This design allowed researchers to compare, for example, the predictions of 18-year-olds with the reports of people who were 28.
• They were able to perform this type of comparison throughout the lifespan.
Findings: change slows but not as much as people think[6:22]
• Dan confirms that participants were right that change slows as people age.
• However, he emphasizes that they were wrong about the degree: change does not slow nearly as much as people think.
• At every age from 18 to 68 in their dataset, people vastly underestimated how much change they would experience over the next 10 years.
Naming the phenomenon: the end of history illusion[6:28]
• Dan and his colleagues call this systematic underestimation of future change the "end of history illusion."
Magnitude of the effect using age comparison[6:31]
• To illustrate the magnitude, Dan notes that 18-year-olds anticipate changing only as much as 50-year-olds actually do over a decade.

Extension of the illusion to personality traits

Overview of the Big Five personality traits[6:48]
• Dan explains that many psychologists now claim there are five fundamental dimensions of personality.
• He lists them as neuroticism, openness to experience, agreeableness, extroversion, and conscientiousness.
Applying the same prediction vs. report method to personality[6:48]
• Researchers asked people how much they expected to change on these traits over the next 10 years.
• They also asked how much participants believed they had changed on these traits over the last 10 years.
Findings: personality continues to change more than people expect[6:58]
• Dan reports that, once again, the rate of change in personality slows with age.
• However, at every age, people underestimate how much their personalities will change in the next decade.

Extension of the illusion to preferences and likes

Types of preferences examined[7:25]
• Dan notes that the pattern is not limited to values and personality, but also applies to basic likes and dislikes.
• Participants were asked about items such as their best friend, favorite kind of vacation, favorite hobby, and favorite kind of music.
Predictions of stability vs. reports of change in preferences[7:42]
• People could readily name their current preferences in these categories.
• Half were asked whether they thought these preferences would change over the next 10 years, and half were asked whether they had changed over the last 10 years.
• Dan reports that people predict the friend they have now will be the friend they have in 10 years and that their current favorite vacation type will still be their favorite.
• However, people who are 10 years older commonly say that these preferences "really changed."

Why the illusion matters: impact on decision-making

The illusion is not harmless[8:06]
• Dan asks whether this misprediction is just a harmless error or whether it matters.
• He answers that it does matter quite a bit, because it undermines decision-making in important ways.
Concert ticket thought experiment[8:27]
• Dan asks the audience to bring to mind their favorite musician today and their favorite musician 10 years ago.
• Participants were asked how much money they would pay right now to see their current favorite musician perform in concert 10 years from now.
• On average, people said they would pay $129 for that future ticket.
• They were also asked how much they would pay to see the person who was their favorite musician 10 years ago perform today.
• For that scenario, people said they would pay only $80 on average.
Rational benchmark vs. actual behavior[8:43]
• Dan argues that in a perfectly rational world, these two amounts should be the same.
• He concludes that people overpay for the opportunity to indulge their current preferences because they overestimate the stability of those preferences.

Why we fall for the illusion: memory vs. imagination

Hypothesized psychological mechanism[9:01]
• Dan notes that researchers are not entirely sure why the illusion happens.
• He suggests it probably has to do with the ease of remembering compared to the difficulty of imagining.
We can remember the past but struggle to imagine a different future[9:16]
• Most people can remember who they were 10 years ago.
• However, they find it hard to imagine who they are going to be 10 years from now.
Mistaking difficulty of imagination for improbability[9:19]
• Dan explains that people mistakenly think that because something is hard to imagine, it is not likely to happen.
• He points out that when people say "I can't imagine that," they are usually referring to their own lack of imagination, not to the unlikelihood of the event.

Conclusion: time as a powerful force of change

Time reshapes who we are in multiple dimensions[9:47]
• Dan says that time is a powerful force that transforms our preferences, reshapes our values, and alters our personalities.
We recognize change only in retrospect[10:10]
• He observes that we seem to appreciate the extent of change only in retrospect, when we look backwards over a decade.
• He describes the present as feeling like a magic time or watershed on the timeline.
Humans as unfinished works in progress[9:54]
• Dan states that human beings are works in progress that mistakenly think they're finished.
• He says the person you are right now is as transient, fleeting, and temporary as all the people you have ever been.
Final takeaway: the one constant is change[10:10]
• Dan concludes that the one constant in our life is change.
• He ends his talk with "Thank you," followed by audience applause.

Outro and playlist continuation

Identification of the talk and its place in the playlist

Credit for Dan Gilbert and the event[10:12]
• Elise returns to say, "That was Dan Gilbert speaking at TED 2014."
Position in the curated playlist[10:28]
• She notes that this is the first of 10 talks from the TED archives being reposted as part of the first TED Talks Daily podcast playlist.

Teaser for the next talk in the playlist

Recommendation of Shankar Vedantam's talk[10:32]
• Elise suggests that if listeners enjoyed Dan's talk, they should stick around because it pairs perfectly with Shankar Vedantam's talk up next.

Reference to TED's curation guidelines

Pointer to more information about curation[10:40]
• Elise tells listeners that if they are curious about TED's curation, they can find out more at TED.com slash curation guidelines.

Production credits and closing

TED Audio Collective and production team[10:46]
• Elise states that TED Talks Daily is part of the TED Audio Collective.
• She credits the talk as being produced and edited by a team including Martha Estefanos, Oliver Friedman, Brian Green, Lucy Little, and Tansika Sangmarnivong.
• She adds that this specific episode was made by Lucy Little, with additional support from Emma Taubner and Daniela Balarezo.
Final sign-off from the host[10:48]
• Elise ends the episode by stating her name and thanking listeners for listening.

Lessons Learned

Actionable insights and wisdom you can apply to your business, career, and personal life.

1

Your identity, values, and preferences will continue to change more than you expect, so treat your current self as a work in progress rather than a finished product.

Reflection Questions:

  • • What are three important beliefs or preferences I held 10 years ago that are different today?
  • • How might recognizing myself as a work in progress change the way I talk about who I am and what I want?
  • • What is one area of my life where I can consciously allow more room for future change instead of locking in my current identity?
2

Because we underestimate how much we will change, long-term decisions should be made with flexibility and reversibility in mind whenever possible.

Reflection Questions:

  • • Which major commitments in my life right now assume that my future preferences and values will stay the same?
  • • How can I redesign one long-term plan or commitment to give my future self more options and freedom?
  • • When I face my next big decision, what specific questions can I ask to check whether I'm overvaluing my present tastes?
3

Be cautious about overpaying-in money, time, or energy-to indulge your current tastes, because your future self may not value them nearly as much.

Reflection Questions:

  • • Where am I currently investing heavily in something (a hobby, purchase, relationship, or status) mainly because it fits my present tastes?
  • • How would I feel about this same investment if I imagined my preferences changing significantly in 5-10 years?
  • • What is one spending or time-commitment decision I can adjust this week to better account for the possibility that my future self will care less about it?
4

Difficulty imagining a different future self does not mean that future is unlikely-it often just reflects the limits of your imagination.

Reflection Questions:

  • • In what areas of my life do I tend to say "I can't imagine changing" or "I'll always be this way"?
  • • How could I deliberately stretch my imagination about who I might be in 10 years, for example by writing a detailed future-self scenario?
  • • What decision am I facing right now where I might be confusing "hard to imagine" with "won't happen"?
5

Regularly reflecting on how you've changed over the past decade can help calibrate your expectations and make more realistic decisions for your future self.

Reflection Questions:

  • • If I compare myself now to 10 years ago, what patterns of change do I notice in my personality, values, and preferences?
  • • How can I build a simple habit (like journaling annually) to track my evolution and inform future decisions?
  • • What upcoming decision could benefit from me first reviewing how my similar decisions have aged over the last decade?

Episode Summary - Notes by Sage

(#1) Elise's Top Ten: The psychology of your future self | Dan Gilbert
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