Seven studies exploring people's tendency to make observer-like attributions about their past and future selves are presented. Studies 1 and 2 showed temporal differences in trait assessments that paralleled the classic actor-observer difference. Study 3 provided evidence against a motivational account of these differences. Studies 4-7 explored underlying mechanisms involving differences in the...

In this paper, we present an incentivized experiment to investigate the degree of loss aversion when people make decisions for their current selves and future selves under risk. We find that when participants make decisions for their future selves, they are less loss averse compared to when they make decisions for their current selves. This finding is consistent with the interpretation of loss ...

This paper shows that in situations in which the preferences of multiple selves are aggregated into a collective decision, even if the researcher has a fully specified theory of how preferences get aggregated, there are typically no testable implications of the theory unless there is an a priori restriction on the number of selves. This result has implications in both interpersonal and intraper...