Thinking about the Future

Knowing how you will feel in the future should be straight forward enough shouldn’t it? Having lived for 23 years I should have a pretty good idea about what I do and don’t like and what will and what won’t make me happy. But we don’t always. Far too often we regret choices and get our thoughts about the future terribly wrong. How enjoyable a house party will be, how sick I will feel halfway through a massive dessert I ordered and how unbearable work will be after 4 hours sleep are classic examples. In hindsight you can see that there were a number of reasons why the house party was going to be rubbish and that you shouldn’t have bothered going and therefore shouldn’t be sat moaning about it. But you went and are now moaning. So through the knowledge shared in this blog let us try and do something to prevent it ever happening again (or perhaps more realistically: not as often).

A study by Jepson et al (2001) using a group of patients on the kidney transplant waiting list underlines our failings in affective forecasting (knowing how we will feel in the future). Patients were asked to predict their quality of life one year later if they a) did not receive the transplant they were understandably desperate for and b) if they did get the transplant. A year later some had received transplants and others had not been as lucky and researchers returned and both groups were asked to report their current quality of life. Those that had received a transplant originally over-predicted their quality of life and weren't as happy as they thought they would be. Conversely, those who didn’t get a transplant under predicted their quality of life. They were in fact a lot happier than they had thought they would be. Although it is fairly unlikely that you will ever need a kidney transplant, important lessons can be learnt. First of all, as human beings we are incredibly resilient. We can adapt. Even if some patients didn’t receive the kidney transplant they were desperate for, they still enjoyed life to a far greater extent than they originally imagined. We have all had problems and tribulations that were serious (may not be as major as needing a new organ) but nevertheless we have overcome them and often unexpectedly quickly. The loss of a spouse or parent is heartbreaking and we may think we will never be as happy as we were before, but chances are we will recover and enjoy life once again.

The second important lesson is that when thinking about the future we often 'focalise' or focus too much on 'stand out stuff' and ignore the many other slightly less glamorous but important parts that make up our day to day experiences. The thought of a new kidney or huge lottery win is just often too big and ‘stand out’ for us to think about all the other stuff we will face in the future. For example, getting a new kidney may well be amazing at first but with or without a new kidney the day to day hassles and relationship problems that make our lives less than perfect still remain. Conversely, not receiving that kidney will be a blow and may make you feel down a lot of the time, but birds still sing, food still tastes good and popcorn and scary films still go hand in hand nicely. Changes in circumstance probably will have some impact on some aspects of our life, but one should think carefully what they will and won’t change.

As well as occasionally focalising about the future we can also be strongly influenced by our present state and feelings. Sometimes our present frame of mind determines how we think we will feel in the future even if how we feel in the present has little or no relevance to the future. Hunger is a fine example and research by Read & van Leeuwen (1998) supports the age old piece of wisdom that shopping on an empty stomach is generally a bad idea. Researchers approached office workers and asked them to make a choice between an unhealthy (and filling) or healthy (yet less filling) snack that they would receive a week later after a lunch time meal. Hungrier participants opted for the unhealthier choice significantly more than their satiated counterparts. Even though both groups would have been equally full up a week later the hungry groups present feelings of hunger couldn’t help but influence their feelings about the future.

If you’ve seen a friend getting back with a boyfriend almost immediately after breaking up you may have seen another example of how present feelings distort thoughts about the future. Too often people will break up for a very good reason (i.e. they are less compatible than dieting and fast food) but the inevitable feelings of loneliness that come with the end of any relationship may cause one to change their mind, as based on their current feelings they can’t imagine ever feeling normal again. Resulting in them both getting back on a rickety wagon that wasn’t and still isn’t right for either passenger. Present state drives thoughts about the future and it can be all too easy to forget how different the world will look with time. It could be ordering a ridiculous amount of food that you will never be able to finish when peckish or tricking oneself into thinking our ex-partners make us happy when we are lonely. Thus, it can be all too easy to be trapped in the present when thinking about the future. You have been warned……..

Related Thoughts

Thinking about the future is tricky, especially when we have strong feelings and cravings in the present.

Please bear in mind an extra kidney or lottery win aren’t definite keys to happiness (although I would definitely take the latter and maybe even the former, as one can never be too careful).

Shock horror: shopping on an empty stomach is a bad idea.

Who am I?

We spend every waking minute in our own company. Such continued exposure to our own thoughts, feelings and experiences can make us feel like experts on ‘ourselves’. However things are not always so simple. This blog pursues my earlier discussion on the weaknesses of memory into even murkier waters, suggesting that we sometimes simply have no idea about how we really feel.

There is good reason to believe that deep within our brain there is a lot going on that we don't know about. The current thinking in academic psychology is that our brain is split almost into two distinct ‘minds’ – the unconscious and the conscious. A lot of our brain work goes on unconsciously, in the background and unnoticed. Walking is a perfect example, our brain automatically and unconsciously co-ordinates balance, timing and muscle tone to get us from A to B. Having to think about every aspect of movement – gait, speed, balance etc. would be both mentally exhausting and mind numbingly slow. Such automatic and unconscious work takes place in an older (in terms of evolution) part of the brain which we will call the ‘unconscious mind’. The other part of the brain (which I will aptly name the ‘conscious mind’) is where our conscious and deliberate thinking goes on.

This final part of my little neuroscience lesson is the one to remember though. The two minds won’t always necessarily work in sink. Furthermore, due to the architecture of the brain we can’t just have a good think and look into the unconscious mind to find out what is going on. Take walking – I honestly have no real idea about all the intricate goings on that makes me walk as I do. But psychologists have gone one step further (wank pun) and tested the possibility of hidden attitudes lurking in the unconscious mind. The way to do this is through an implicit test of attitude. In such a test participants are required to quickly categorise two types of pictures when paired with either positive or negative words.

For example, if we consider an implicit attitude test of heroes and villains. When the pictures of heroes are presented with positive words we observe that participants are much faster at correctly categorising the image as a hero. On the other hand, when the pictures of villains are presented with negative words participants are faster at categorising. These finding appears because we have an automatic association between villain and 'bad' and one between hero and 'good'. When two associations match up it facilitates speed and accuracy of categorising. This type of test is interesting as participants are not consciously controlling their response times: it’s an automatic and unconscious measure. In the case of heroes and villains conscious (I like heroes) and unconscious (implicit association between heroes and ‘good’) attitudes match up. But they don’t always.

Fazio et al. (1995) investigated a controversial topic: Race. Examining the implicit attitudes of white participants towards white and black people. Their first finding was that the white participants differed in their reaction times by racial profile of photograph: suggestive of a stronger negative association towards blacks over whites. Additionally, participants also filled out a questionnaire asking about attitudes towards racial issues and prejudice, before finally meeting with a black confederate for a brief chat. Unbeknown to participants ratings were made by the black guy on how friendly and interested he thought they were. First of all, participant’s questionnaire responses about racial issues and prejudice did not predict their friendliness and were not related to the implicit attitude test. But you guessed it – the implicit attitude test did predict behaviour. Those with higher unconscious negative attitudes were far less friendly towards the black guy. This study was a landmark as not only did it show that we can possess unknown feelings towards people or things, but it also showed that these unconscious attitudes can drive our behaviour. And to hammer home the point, as the word ‘unconscious’ suggests - we are none the wiser.

But how can we understand this hidden mind? Expert in the study of self knowledge Professor Tim Wilson suggests that if we are to better understand the seemingly hidden parts of our minds we should become very interested in our own behaviour. For example, if you find that you haven’t seen your grandmother in over a year and spend very little on her Christmas presents it may be because you don’t much like her company. You just don’t realise. It may be that over the years you have found her deafness, boring anecdotes and general smell more and more unpleasant. And although society teaches us that we should visit family as it is ‘normal’, it isn’t always the most desirable thing to do. When confronted with the opinion that you don’t much like your grandmother you are adamant it isn’t the case. But you may well be kidding yourself. You may possess a negative implicit attitude and not be fully aware of it yet. But when you think about it more – do you really like sweet old grandma that much?

Thus, looking at our own behaviour and questioning whether the explanations we assign to our actions are fully accurate may help us become more self aware. But don’t worry too much! You can still have some confidence that you like your girlfriend as unconscious and conscious attitudes will often match up. It’s the fact that they sometimes might not which should keep us on our guard.

A final hypothetical example that will pull on the heart strings. Relationships: Fiona could have negative unconscious feelings towards ‘love’ due to a childhood in a broken home in which she regularly witnessed people supposedly ‘in love’ being hurt. Because of this she continues to make mountains out of molehills and convinces herself early on that Adam Grafton is wrong for her when in fact he is very right for her. But Fiona doesn’t know and isn’t the type to think too much about life. Her friends may have witnessed the same pattern with every other bloke and ‘get it’ as they are viewers from the outside. Poor Fiona isn’t though and continues to make the same mistakes over and over again from the inside.

And The Point Is What?

-Try and watch your own behaviour every now and again as you might see something interesting.

-If you know a Fiona then be a good friend and tell her what you think.

-Avoid girls like Fiona, they are a nightmare.

-If you always plan to do something but never quite get round to it be honest with yourself. Is it really that things keep cropping up or is it because you don’t much like them?!