When   Friday, November 13, 2009   Time   11:00 AM - 12:00 PM  
Where   Swift Hall/annex Room 414 2029 Sheridan Rd.   map it
Audience   - Faculty/Staff - Student
Contact   Bobby Cheon   847-467-9923  
Group   Social Psychology Program

This week's speaker is HAL ERSNER-HERSHFIELD, a postdoctoral fellow in the Dispute Resolution Research Center.  His talk will take place from 11 am to noon in 414 Swift Hall.

What will be and what might have been: How thinking about time can affect emotion, decision-making, and commitment to others

The passage of time, and the events that unfold during it – can greatly impact the way people feel and the decisions that they make. I will present two lines of research that focus on these themes. First, I will explore what happens when people focus on the future and how distant (or close) it seems. Here, I will show how a sense of continuity that one has to one's future self can greatly impact decisions that are made in the present that have consequences in the future. Namely, I will demonstrate how a lack of continuity to the future self can have somewhat negative effects on intertemporal choice. Second, I will show how thinking about the past and what might have been different about it can dramatically affect the way people feel about the present. Here, I will demonstrate how engaging in counterfactual reflection - that is, considering what might have been different, rather than what actually happened - can make people feel more committed to both their companies and their countries.