Many people fail to save what they need to for retirement (Munnell, Webb, and Golub-Sass 2009). Research on excessive discounting of the future suggests that removing the lure of immediate rewards by pre-committing to decisions, or elaborating the value of future rewards can both make decisions more future-oriented. In this article, we explore a third and complementary route, one that deals not with present and future rewards, but with present and future selves. In line with thinkers who have suggested that people may fail, through a lack of belief or imagination, to identify with their future selves (Parfit 1971; Schelling 1984), we propose that allowing people to interact with age-progressed renderings of themselves will cause them to allocate more resources toward the future. In four studies, participants interacted with realistic computer renderings of their future selves using immersive virtual reality hardware and interactive decision aids. In all cases, those who interacted with virtual future selves exhibited an increased tendency to accept later monetary rewards over immediate ones.

This study measured arousal responses to multitasking by recording switches between content on personal computers over a day. Results showed that switches occurred every 19 seconds, more often than has been reported in previous research. Arousal was highest at the point of a switch with declines in skin conductance afterward. Switches were also preceded by a 12‐second period of increasing skin conductance. 2 new methods were used, one an original application that recorded screen shots, and another that measured changes in skin conductance during the day using a wrist sensor. Results are discussed in light of increasing use of single devices displaying multiple types of content, rather than multitasking that occurs when attention is divided between content on multiple devices.

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