Hal Hershfield

Hal Hershfield is an American psychologist and professor of marketing and behavioral decision making at the UCLA Anderson School of Management, with a doctorate in psychology from Stanford University.

His research sits at the intersection of psychology and economics and centers on a single organizing idea: future self-continuity, the degree to which a person feels psychologically connected to the self they will become years or decades from now.

A striking neuroimaging finding anchors the work: when many people contemplate their distant future self, the brain activity resembles the pattern seen when they think about a stranger rather than themselves. In other words, we often “treat our future self like a stranger,” and the strength of that felt connection predicts a range of long-horizon decisions, from how much people save to how ethically and healthily they behave.

If indifference toward a stranger drives short-sighted choices, then strengthening the bond should improve them. Hershfield and colleagues tested this with vivid, age-progressed renderings of participants’ own faces: people who encountered a digitally aged image of themselves allocated meaningfully more money toward retirement than those shown only their current likeness.

Related studies link exposure to the future self with reduced cheating and lower delinquency. His 2023 book Your Future Self: How to Make Tomorrow Better Today gathers this research into practical methods. Within the Atlas, Hershfield carries the science-of-identity-over-time thread: he echoes the field’s intuition about “becoming your future self,” but grounds it in rigorous behavioral measurement, showing how connection to a vividly imagined future self can be deliberately cultivated to change present behavior.