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FRIENDS WITH MY FUTURE SELF: LONGITUDINAL VIVIDNESS INTERVENTION REDUCES DELINQUENCY
Author(s) -
GELDER JEANLOUIS,
LUCIANO EVA C.,
WEULEN KRANENBARG MARLEEN,
HERSHFIELD HAL E.
Publication year - 2015
Publication title -
criminology
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 3.467
H-Index - 139
eISSN - 1745-9125
pISSN - 0011-1384
DOI - 10.1111/1745-9125.12064
Subject(s) - juvenile delinquency , psychology , psychological intervention , avatar , intervention (counseling) , variance (accounting) , self control , test (biology) , bootstrapping (finance) , self , developmental psychology , social psychology , computer science , paleontology , accounting , human–computer interaction , psychiatry , economics , financial economics , business , biology
In a field experiment, we use a novel method to test whether instilling a greater sense of vividness of the future self motivates people to act in a more future‐oriented way and reduces their delinquent involvement. We manipulate vividness of the future self by having participants, a sample of high‐school youth (N = 133), “befriend” an avatar representing their future self on a social network website. For 7 days, they reply to short messages from their future self designed to trigger thinking about that distant self. Using repeated‐measures analysis of variance (ANOVA), we find that participants who had been linked to their future self report less delinquent involvement, whereas controls did not. Furthermore, the results of a nonparametric bootstrapping procedure show that this effect is mediated by changes in vividness of the future self, such that increases in vividness lead to lower self‐reported delinquency. We conclude that vividness of the future self holds promise not only as a cognitive explanation for the failure to make informed cost–benefit trade‐offs but also for interventions aiming to reduce delinquency.