Sasha Brietzke & Meghan Meyer
Self-representations across time become indistinguishable with distance from the present
Contact at: sasha.c.brietzke.gr@dartmouth.edu
A basic principle of perception is that as objects increase in distance from an observer, they also become logarithmically compressed in perception (i.e., not differentiated from one another), making them hard to distinguish. Could this basic principle apply to perhaps our most meaningful mental representation: our own sense of self across time? I will report four studies that suggest selves are increasingly indiscriminable with temporal distance from the present, as well. In Studies 1-3, participants made trait ratings across various time points in the future. We found that participants compressed their future selves, relative to their present self. This effect was preferential to the self and could not be explained by the alternative possibility that individuals simply perceive arbitrary self-change irrespective of temporal distance. In Study 4, we tested for neural evidence of temporal self-compression by having participants complete trait ratings across time points while undergoing functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI). Representational similarity analysis (RSA) was used to determine if neural self-representations are compressed with temporal distance, as well. We found evidence of temporal self-compression in areas of the default network, including medial prefrontal cortex (MPFC) and posterior cingulate cortex (PCC). Specifically, neural pattern similarity between self-representations were logarithmically compressed with temporal distance. Taken together, our findings may help explain some of the counterintuitive ways people treat their temporally distant selves (e.g., making choices that deny climate change). Further, these findings may explain why imaging the future in sharp detail is a challenging task.
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