FRIENDS WITH MY FUTURE SELF: LONGITUDINAL VIVIDNESS INTERVENTION REDUCES DELINQUENCY

• Author: JEAN‐LOUIS GELDER,MARLEEN WEULEN KRANENBARG,HAL E. HERSHFIELD,EVA C. LUCIANO
• DOI: http://doi.org/10.1111/1745-9125.12064
• Published date: 01 May 2015
• Date: 01 May 2015

FRIENDS WITH MY FUTURE SELF: LONGITUDINAL

VIVIDNESS INTERVENTION REDUCES

DELINQUENCY∗

JEAN-LOUIS VAN GELDER,1EVA C. LUCIANO,2

MARLEEN WEULEN KRANENBARG,1

and HAL E. HERSHFIELD3

1Netherlands Institute for the Study of Crime and Law Enforcement

2Department of Psychology, University of Bern

3Anderson School of Management, University of California—Los Angeles

KEYWORDS: future self, delinquency, social network websites, multiple selves,

self-defeating behavior

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. Us-

ing repeated-measures analysis of variance (ANOVA), we find that participants who

had been linked to their future self report less delinquent involvement, whereas con-

trols 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 vivid-

ness 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.

Typically, crime’s benefits are immediate, whereas its costs tend to be more remote

(Hirschi, 2004). If these remote costs fail to motivate individuals to refrain from commit-

ting it, then crime is likely to occur (Nagin and Pogarsky, 2004). Unsurprisingly, extant

research has shown that, compared with their normative peers, delinquents tend to

overvalue or focus on the more direct consequences of behavior, e.g., sexual gratification,

fast cash, goods, or status, while disregarding or discounting the more delayed effects,

e.g., sanctions, dropping out of school, having a criminal record, (social) exclusion, and

∗Additional supporting information can be found in the listing for this article in the Wiley Online

Library at http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/crim.2015.53.issue-2/issuetoc.

The authors would like to thank Smadar Groen, Fatih Karadavut, Jurjen Wijnstroom, Joyce

Seinen, Lisa van ’t Veer, and Niels Hazekamp for the excellent assistance with data collection.

Furthermore, we would like to thank Jeroen Elfferich for his suggestion of using social media in

our experiment. Direct correspondence to Jean-Louis Van Gelder, Netherlands Institute for the

Study of Crime and Law Enforcement, P.O. Box 71304, 1008BH Amsterdam, the Netherlands

(e-mail: jlvangelder@nscr.nl).

C2015 American Society of Criminology doi: 10.1111/1745-9125.12064

CRIMINOLOGY Volume 53 Number 2 158–179 2015 158

VIVIDNESS OF THE FUTURE SELF REDUCES DELINQUENCY 159

stigmatization (e.g., Farrington, 1995; Loughran, Paternoster, and Weiss, 2012; Nagin and

Pogarsky, 2001; Steinberg et al., 2009; Tangney, Baumeister, and Boone, 2004; Topalli

and Wright, 2014).

The idea that delinquents have a tendency to live in the “here and now” while disre-

garding the more distant consequences of their actions also underlies several established

theoretical perspectives and concepts in criminology, such as self-control, impulsivity, and

temporal discounting (e.g., Gottfredson and Hirschi, 1990; Moffitt, 1993; Wilson and Her-

rnstein, 1985). As Wilson and Herrnstein (1985: 44–45) noted: “[T]he extent to which

people take into account distant possibilities . .. will affect whether they choose crime or

noncrime.” Similarly, Gottfredson and Hirschi (1990) argued that the ability to consider

the longer term consequences of one’s actions is the principal factor driving criminal in-

volvement.

The (lack of) consideration of delayed consequences is not limited to research and the-

orizing about crime and delinquency, but also pervades much of our thinking about sanc-

tioning and the criminal justice system. Deterrence, one of the foundational assumptions

of most contemporary criminal justice systems, is premised on the notion that potential

offenders would abstain from offending if they were to contemplate its cost adequately.

Nor are the negative consequences of the tendency to be present-focused confined to

the ambit of criminal conduct, as it has also been shown to be predictive of other self-

defeating and risk behaviors such as drug use, unprotected sex, gambling, smoking, and

drunk driving (Steinberg et al., 2009; Zimbardo and Boyd, 1999, 2008; Zuckerman, 1979).

In this article, we explore a potential cognitive mechanism accounting for the present-

orientedness of delinquent individuals. We propose a novel perspective based on the as-

sumption that the tendency to live in the here and now is related to the inability to project

one’s self into the future. Drawing from multiple-self models, we argue that people differ

in the extent to which they can visualize themselves at a later point in time and that these

differences in perception of the self over time impact delinquent decision making. That

is, a vivid image of the future self leads one to contemplate the delayed potential conse-

quences of behavior as a result of the realization that these ultimately accrue to oneself,

even if at a delay. Conversely, a weak or vague image of the future self promotes reaping

the benefits of the present moment and discourages the contemplation of long-term con-

sequences. As delinquency, analogous to other self-defeating behaviors and self-control

dilemmas, is typically characterized by immediate benefits and temporally more remote

costs, a lack of vividness of the future self is likely to encourage delinquent decision mak-

ing (or, at least, not to deter it). We will argue that increasing the vividness of the future

self should reduce delinquency as it motivates individuals to conceptualize more clearly

the interests of their self in the future.

These assumptions are tested using a novel method that taps into the potential of social

media as a tool for delinquency research. In a field experiment, participants, a sample of

high-school youth, “befriend” their future self on a social network website. For 7 consec-

utive days, participants receive a daily message from their future self that is designed to

trigger thinking about the future self with the objective of instilling an increasingly vivid

image of the self in the future. Participants in the control condition are linked to their

present avatar and receive similar messages from this avatar, but instead these messages

are situated in the present. Before and after the manipulation, participants self-report

their delinquent activity and fill out a vividness of the future self measure.