Meeting your future self: Stimulating students’ future orientation through a smartphone-based intervention

High future orientation and having a vivid image of the future self have been associated with beneficial outcomes such as increased ethical behavior, increased saving, higher motivation, improved health, goal achievement, and reduced delinquency. In the current project, we aim to examine to which extent future orientation and future self-identification can be stimulated. To this end, we are developing an intervention delivered through a smartphone application in which people are stimulated to think about the future and interact with their future self. As people are almost always near their smartphone, implementing an intervention via this technology facilitates daily exposure to the intervention content.

The study has three aims: 1) examine users’ experiences with the smartphone app and their adherence to the intervention, 2) examine whether the intervention can stimulate future orientation and future self-identification, and 3) explore which intervention module(s) generate the strongest intervention effects. With this knowledge we intend to iterate the application for follow-up research and further develop and optimize this novel intervention.

Aim 1: We hypothesize that users experience the application as user friendly, rate the application as engaging, and use the application multiple times per week.

Aim 2: The smartphone intervention will increase students’ future oriented mindset and behaviors, and will increase students’ future self-identification compared to students in the control condition.

Aim 3: We have no specific hypothesis about which intervention module establishes the largest intervention effects.

To assess the effectiveness of the intervention, we conduct assessments at multiple time points:
- T1: prior to the intervention
- Interim measurements of a subset of outcomes after week 1 and week 2 of the intervention
- T2: immediately after the intervention
- T3: 3 months after the end of the intervention
- T4: end of the academic year (only study results)

The intervention aims to increase future oriented mindset and behaviors. It is based on the assumption that the lack of a clear vision of the future and the inability to imagine the future self is related to negative and short-sighted behaviors as long term consequences of behaviors are not adequately taken into account. During the intervention, participants will be encouraged to think about their future and create a clear vision of who they want to be and what they want to achieve, i.e., their future self. The intervention aims to accomplish this by letting participants interact with a digitally aged avatar of themselves, representing their future self.

In the current study, the intervention is implemented through a smartphone application. The intervention consists of three modules, each lasting a week. During the intervention period (i.e., 3 weeks), participants will have short (approximately 5 minutes) daily interactions with their future self. These interactions differ in nature, for instance psychoeducation, perspective taking, and goal setting.