At every stage1
of our lives we make decisions that will profoundly influence the lives of the
people we’re going to become2,
and then when we become those people, we’re not always thrilled3 with the decisions we made. So young
people pay good money to get tattoos
removed4 that teenagers5
paid good money to get. Middle-aged people rushed
to divorce people who young adults rushed to marry7. Older adults work hard to lose what
middle-aged adults worked hard to gain. On
and on and on8. The question is, as a psychologist, that
fascinates me is, why do we make
decisions that our future selves9 so often
regret10?
Now, I think one of the reasons — I’ll try to convince you today — is
that we have a fundamental misconception11
about the power of time. Every one of you knows that the rate of change12 slows over the human lifespan14, that your
children seem14 to
change by the minute15
but your parents seem to change by the year. But what is the name of this
magical point in life where change suddenly16
goes from a gallop17
to a crawl18? Is
it teenage years? Is it middle age19?
Is it old age? The answer, it turns
out20, for most people, is now, wherever21 now happens to be. What I want to convince you today is that all
of us are walking around22 with an illusion, an
illusion that history, our personal history, has just come to an end, that we
have just recently become the people that we were always meant to be23
and will be for the rest of our lives.
Let me give you some data24
to back up that claim25.
So here’s a study of change in people’s personal values over time. Here’s three values. Everybody here holds26
all of them, but you probably know that as
you grow27, as you age28,
the balance of these values shifts29.
So how does it do so? Well, we asked thousands of people. We asked half of them
to predict30 for
us how much their values would change in the next 10 years, and the others to
tell us how much their values had changed in the last 10 years. And this enabled us31 to do a
really interesting kind of analysis, because it allowed us to compare the
predictions of people, say, 18 years old, to the reports of people who were 28,
and to do that kind of analysis throughout
the lifespan32.
Here’s what we found. First of
all33, you are right, change does slow down34 as we age, but second, you’re wrong,
because it doesn’t slow nearly as much as we think. At every age, from 18 to 68
in our data set35,
people vastly underestimated36
how much change they would experience over the next 10 years.
We call this the “end of history” illusion. To give you an idea of the
magnitude of this effect, you can connect these two lines, and what you see
here is that 18-year-olds anticipate changing only as much as 50-year-olds actually37 do.
Now it’s not just values. It’s all sorts of other things. For example,
personality. Many of you know that psychologists now claim that38 there are five fundamental
dimensions of personality: neuroticism, openness39
to experience, agreeableness40,
extraversion41,
and conscientiousness. Again, we asked people how much they expected to change
over the next 10 years, and also how much they had changed over the last 10
years, and what we found, well, you’re going to get used42 to seeing this diagram over and over43,
because once again44
the rate of change does slow as we age, but at every age, people underestimate
how much their personalities will change in the next decade.
And it isn’t just ephemeral
things45 like values and personality. You can ask people
about their likes and dislikes, their basic preferences. For example, name your
best friend, your favorite kind of vacation, what’s your favorite hobby, what’s
your favorite kind of music. People can name these things.
We ask half of them to tell us, “Do you think that that will change over
the next 10 years?” and half of them to tell us, “Did that change over the last
10 years?” And what we find, well, you’ve seen it twice46 now, and here it is again: people predict
that the friend they have now is the friend they’ll have in 10 years, the
vacation they most enjoy now is the one they’ll enjoy in 10 years, and yet47, people who are
10 years older all say, “Eh, you know, that’s really changed.”
Does any of this matter?48 Is this just a form of mis-prediction that doesn’t
have consequences? No, it matters quite
a bit49, and I’ll give you an example of why. It bedevils50 our
decision-making in important ways. Bring to mind right now for yourself your
favorite musician today and your favorite musician 10 years ago. I put mine up
on the screen51 to
help you along.
Now we asked people to predict for us, to tell us how much money they
would pay right now to see their current52
favorite musician perform in concert 10 years from now, and on average53, people
said they would pay 129 dollars for that ticket. And yet54, when we asked them how much they would
pay to see the person who was their favorite 10 years ago perform55 today, they say only 80 dollars. Now,
in a perfectly rational world, these should be the same number, but we overpay56 for
the opportunity to indulge57 our current preferences
because we overestimate58 their stability.
Why does this happen? We’re not entirely
sure59, but it probably has
to do with60 the ease
of remembering61 versus the difficulty of imagining. Most of us can remember who we were 10 years
ago, but we find it hard to imagine who we’re going to be, and then we mistakenly62
think that because it’s hard to imagine, it’s not likely to happen63. Sorry, when people say “I can’t imagine
that,” they’re usually talking about their own lack of64
imagination, and not about the unlikelihood65 of the
event that they’re describing.
The bottom line66
is, time is a powerful force. It transforms our preferences. It reshapes67 our
values. It alters our personalities. We seem to appreciate this fact, but only
in retrospect. Only when we look backwards do we realize68 how much change happens in a decade.
It’s as if69, for
most of us, the present is a magic time. It’s a watershed70 on the timeline. It’s the moment at
which we finally become ourselves. Human beings71 are works in progress that mistakenly think
they’re finished. The person you are right now is as transient72,
as fleeting73 and as temporary as all the people
you’ve ever been. The one constant in our life is change. Thank you.
Vocabulary
1. Stage = estagio, etapa
2. Become = tornar-se
3. Thrilled = entusiasmado
4. to get tattoos removed = remover tatuagens
5. teenagers = adolescente
6. rushed = apressar-se
7. marry = casar-se
8. On and on and on = continuamente
9. Selves = “eus”
10. so often regret = tão frequentemente lamentam
11. misconception = equívoco, conceito errado
12. rate of change = indice de mudança
13. lifespan = período de vida
14. seem = parecer
15. by the minute = a cada minuto
16. suddenly = subitamente
17. gallop = galope
18. crawl = arrastar-se
19. middle age = meia idade
20. it turns out = “como se sabe“
21. wherever = onde quer que
22. walking around = andando por aí
23. meant to be = destinados a ser
24. data = dados
25. back up that claim = sustentar esta afirmação
26. holds = possui
27.
as you grow = a medida em que voce cresce
28.
age = envelhecer
29.
shifts = muda
30.
predict = prever
31.
enabled us = capacita-nos
32.
throughout the lifespan = por todo o periodo de vida
33.
First of all = antes de qualquer coisa
34.
slow down = desacelerar
35.
data set = conjunto de dados
36.
vastly underestimated = subestimaram enormemente
37.
actually = realmente
38.
claim that = afirmam que
39.
openness = abertura, franqueza
40.
agreeableness = característica de ser agradável
41.
extraversion = extroversão
42.
to get used = acostumar-se
43.
over and over = várias vezes
44.
once again = mais uma vez
45.
ephemeral things = coisas efêmeras (passageiras)
46.
twice = duas vezes
47.
yet = porém
48. Does any of this matter? = será que algo disso importa
49. quite a bit = um bocado
50. bedevils = atormenta
51. screen = tela
52. current = atual
53. on average = em media
54. And yet = E porém
55. Perform = apresentar-se
56. Overpay = pagar a mais
57. Indulge = saciar
58. Overestimate = superestimamos
59. entirely sure = completamente certos
60. has to do with = tem a ver com
61. ease of remembering = facilidade de recorder
62. mistakenly = equivocadamente
63. likely to happen = provável de acontecer
64. lack of = falta de
65. unlikelihood = improbabilidade
66. bottom line = ponto principal
67. reshapes = reformata
68. realize = perceber
69. as if = como se
70. watershed = bacia hidrográfica
71. Human beings = seres humanos
72. Transient = transitório
73. Fleeting = efêmero, transitório