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future self
Your future self is often a stranger you undervalue.
A 2011 fMRI study found that the neural representation of the future self is more similar to that of a stranger than to the present self.
The activity is not 'nearly identical'; it is statistically more similar to the stranger condition than the present-self condition.
You struggle to provide for a person you do not truly know yet.
Where this comes from
- Study
- Hershfield et al., 2011, Social Cognitive and Affective Neuroscience
- What the check found
- The study (Hershfield, Wimmer, & Knutson, 2011) does exist and supports the central idea, but the phrasing 'nearly identical' inflates the finding of 'more similar'.
- Confidence
- Solid, with limits
Related
One of these every day, and every one names the study it came from. When a finding is contested, it says so.