22 June 2009

Do you suffer from "behavioral hyperopia" ?

The ophthalmology terms "myopia" (near-sightedness) and "hyperopia" (far-sightedness) are often applied by behavioral psychologists to describe patterns of self-control. Virginia Postrel discusses the latter in The Atlantic:
Behavioral economists, whose work combines the techniques and ideas of economics and psychology, have long focused on what Thomas Schelling, the 2005 Nobel laureate, called the “intimate contest for self-command”—the all-too-familiar inner conflict between the would-be disciplined self who wants to get up early, exercise, and lose weight and the pleasure-seeking self who prefers to sleep in, watch TV, and eat chocolate...

The intimate contest for self-command can apply to pleasures as well, and for similar reasons. In the here and now, we want to behave one way in the future, only to change our minds as that future nears and the immediate costs of our plans become more real. Yet, looking back from the still-farther future, we wish we’d indulged—just as, looking back on our lazy morning in bed, we wish we’d gotten up and worked...

Myopia includes shortsighted behaviors like overeating or failing to save for retirement; hyperopia entails, as Kivetz put it in the Journal of Consumer Research, “excessive far­sightedness and future-biased preferences, consistently delaying pleasure and overweighing necessity and virtue in local decisions.” Hyperopic people weight imagined future benefits so heavily that they don’t enjoy themselves today and later regret hoarding their time or money.
More at the link, including insights into how it applies to the current economic downturn. Personally, I think every regret I have about my life involves things I didn't do, rather than things I did...

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