Will Durant quipped, “we are what we repeatedly do,” and Ainslie contends that people, armed with this ammunition, deploy it to nag themselves into prudence. In facing a choice between pleasure now and future rewards, people extrapolate the decision as diagnostic of how their preferences will play on loop ad infinitum. They draw this inference to marshal their resolve, with one self-control failure tantamount to indefinite self-control failure. That people must infer – rather than simply foresee – their choices down the road connotes that the self making those choices remains, to the current self, a mystery. No wonder, then, that Ainslie describes choice over time as, “an intertemporal variant of repeated prisoner's dilemma” (sect. 3.2.1., para. 3).

This conceptualization specifies one particular set of future selves: the unpredictable choosers who, Groundhog Day fashion, will debate again and again whether to take smaller payoffs sooner or larger payoffs later when their turns come. Each chooser considers what to choose because each has the power to choose. Each decision presupposes another set of future selves: those who either receive that preordained larger payoff later or suffer in its absence. Either way, these future selves bear the consequences of the prior choices made by their past selves. Summing across these individuals results in a wholly powerless cumulative future self. Where agentic selves might jockey across time in a repeated prisoner's dilemma, the cumulative future self can only hope to curry favor in what amounts to, for her or him, an intertemporal dictator game.

At the mercy of choices made by past selves, the cumulative future self does not tend to fare well. People spend, smoke, snack, and (unprotectedly) sex their future into trouble because the person they will one day become seems more like someone else altogether (Bartels & Urminsky, Reference Bartels and Urminsky2011; Frederick, Reference Frederick, Read and Baumeister2003; Hershfield & Bartels, Reference Hershfield, Bartels, Oettingen, Sevincer and Gollwitzer2018; Parfit, Reference Parfit1971; Pronin, Reference Pronin2008). Defined by slippery features that beget less generosity from the current self, pleas for patience from the cumulative future self work best by closing the gap between selves.

Cumulative future selves might warrant poor treatment because they lack a sense of vividness. Therefore, why not put a face to the name, even if they're both your own? Showing people an age-rendered visage of themselves compels them to take better care, via their behavior right now, of that person (Hershfield et al., Reference Hershfield, Goldstein, Sharpe, Fox, Yeykelis, Carstensen and Bailenson2011). Swapping pictures for words can have just as strong an effect (Bryan & Hershfield, Reference Bryan and Hershfield2012; Chishima & Wilson, Reference Chishima and Wilson2020) because both enhance emotional connections over time (Bartels & Rips, Reference Bartels and Rips2010; Ersner-Hershfield, Garton, Ballard, Samanez-Larkin, & Knutson, Reference Ersner-Hershfield, Garton, Ballard, Samanez-Larkin and Knutson2009).

Uncertainty makes the future self feel not just socially remote but also as belonging to a future age (see Maglio & Kwok, Reference Maglio and Kwok2016), as these different constructs conspire to push things farther and farther away (Maglio, Reference Maglio2020a, Reference Maglio2020b; Maglio, Trope, & Liberman, Reference Maglio, Trope and Liberman2013a). Although the intertemporal tradeoffs that impact cumulative future selves transpire over objective time (e.g., $20 today vs. $40 next week), people mentally convert from absolute time to a relative sense of closeness or distance in thinking across time (Hu & Maglio, Reference Hu and Maglio2018), including the making of choices between smaller payoffs sooner and larger payoffs later (Maglio, Trope, & Liberman, Reference Maglio, Trope and Liberman2013b; Malkoc & Zauberman, Reference Malkoc and Zauberman2019; Xu, González-Vallejo, & Vincent, Reference Xu, González-Vallejo and Vincent2020; Zauberman, Kim, Malkoc, & Bettman, Reference Zauberman, Kim, Malkoc and Bettman2009).

Changing how people subjectively see time, then, might change how they see – and act toward – their future selves (Evans & Wilson, Reference Evans and Wilson2014; Peetz, Wilson, & Strahan, Reference Peetz, Wilson and Strahan2009). This need not apply only to the time separating now from one particular future choice, or now from one specific version of the future self, but to the broader progression of time. Based on this possibility, we recently manipulated the sense of how long the present lasts and found that expediting the felt onset of the future – casting the present as short and the future as imminent – caused people to opt for more far-sighted alternatives (Hershfield & Maglio, Reference Hershfield and Maglio2020).

Habits, Ainslie proposes, are outcomes and not mechanisms, suggesting that, “good habits require intertemporal bargains” (sect. 3.3.2., para. 3) with future selves in the position of agentic choosers. A different future self – a cumulative future self – falls on the receiving end of those dictated decisions, subject to the decrees made by many prior-self overlords. Different interventions, including but by no means limited to those summarized herein, can change how people think about the self progressing through time and, in turn, whether current selves sacrifice on behalf of the cumulative future self. Evidence attesting to the merit of these interventions to strengthen self-control, although, almost exclusively takes the form of one-off choices between immediate and delayed rewards. Might these assessments leave hiding in plain sight not just a fleeting shot in the arm, but the spontaneous emergence of something that looks a lot like a good habit? Ainslie's model at least suggests that single-shot allocations themselves serve as test cases resulting from a resolve-based stiffening of willpower. It remains to be seen whether singularly, or perhaps even repeatedly, intervening on behalf of the cumulative future self can transform single-shot behaviors into habitual changes in action writ large. Favorable reappraisal of the cumulative future self may thus fast-track the formulation of good habits for the benefit of all selves over time.