How connected consumers feel (or don’t feel) to their future selves impacts their spending and savings decisions, researchers at Columbia Business School and The University of Chicago Booth School of Business have determined.

The researchers conducted a series of experiments that manipulated the degree to which subjects felt connected to their future selves. When discontinuity with the future self is anticipated, people behave more impatiently — speeding up the consumption of utility (in this case, gift cards) — more than when connectedness to the future self is expected.

The researchers asked a group of college seniors — three weeks before graduation — to read a passage that described college graduation either as an event that would prompt a major change in their identities or as an event that would prompt only a relatively trivial change. Compared to students who read the passage describing graduation as a small change, those who read a description of the event as a major change were much more likely to make more impatient choices, choosing to receive a gift certificate worth $120 in the next week rather than wait a year for up to $240.

Their work suggests that people can be motivated to hold onto their money, or make more prudent decisions by increasing their sense of connectedness to their future selves, the researchers said.

Ref.: Daniel M. Bartels & Oleg Urminsky, On Intertemporal Selfishness: How the Perceived Instability of Identity Underlies Impatient Consumption, Journal of Consumer Research, 2011; [DOI: 10.1086/658339]