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Top line. Science says the odds of making good choices now for your future self are slim. Why? The brain sees its future self as a stranger. Behavioural science exposes this flaw—and shows how to use anticipated regret to bridge the gap, trigger emotion, and drive smarter, lasting decisions.
At 37, I was asked to die. The inconvenient request—made at a company bosberaad in the late ’90s—tasked each member of our executive team with imagining the eulogy that might be delivered at our future funerals. And to consider how our current choices, behaviours or inactions might change to avoid regretting any of those final words.
Although the topic seemed a morbid and irrelevant mind game for a corporate strategy retreat, it served a crucial mental purpose: anticipating regret from a future perspective is one of the few ways to truly make the human mind think about the long-term consequences of its current choices. But why?
Behavioural science reveals that the human subconscious mind, responsible for forming 95% of the brain’s decisions, makes few good choices about its long-range future because the subconscious perceives the current self and the future self as two separate people. Neurological studies show the brain regards its future self as a stranger and has difficulty relating to it. As a result, the brain approaches decisions for the current and future self very differently. Decisions for the current self are made with personally relevant gains or losses in mind. But decisions that impact the strange future self are detached and impersonal.
The further away the consequences of a decision, the more indifferent the brain becomes—which is why decisions affecting the “stranger” in the future are often put off or made carelessly. Also, the brain’s evolutionary wiring prioritises immediate survival over distant outcomes, making it naturally biased against long-term thinking that impacts the future self.
If the brain struggles to connect with its future self, getting it to make careful decisions about far-off outcomes seems hard. Hard, for sure. But not impossible.
Behavioural science research reveals a powerful tool to do it. It’s called anticipated regret. It works by causing the mind to imagine how regret around choices—or lack of choices—might feel in the future. By asking the brain to reflect backward from a point where consequences will be felt, anticipated regret creates a vivid and emotionally charged connection between the current self and the future self.
Professor Daniel Gilbert’s research on affective forecasting at Harvard University confirms that when regret is used as an anchor, a distant or abstract concept becomes tangible and emotionally significant for the present self. This helps the brain evaluate long-term outcomes with the same weight and urgency as current situations, overriding the hyperbolic discounting bias that prefers short-term gains over long-term ones. It effectively grounds abstract future possibilities in the reality of today’s decision-making—enabling the present self to make more informed and deliberate choices.
Although the eulogy exercise is just one way of applying the anticipated regret device, it’s not the only way to connect the future self with the present self through a shared lens. There are many ways to get the subconscious to launch the strong emotions of anticipated regret, including causing the present self to account to the future self for the decisions the future self will experience. Questions like “Will your future self thank you for your vote today?” or “Will your grandchildren thank the younger you at their graduation?” all serve to link the choices of the present self to the future self.
The eulogy exercise at our company getaway gave our executive team the personal context to go on to ask, “Will future shareholders and stakeholders thank us for our thinking today?” The backward reflection triggered anticipated regret and counterfactual thinking (“What might we regret in the future about our decisions now?”). It reframed our thinking and compelled each leader to evaluate strategic choices as if the consequences were already realised. As a result, different, better decisions about the future were made. And shareholders were very grateful indeed.
To influence the subconscious mastermind to think about long-term decisions more carefully, don’t ask it to look forward. Instead, get it to look backward. And anticipate what it might regret.
About. Jonathan Hall is the CEO of ThinkWorks, a behavioural science consultancy that helps organisations move more minds with influence and narrative science. ThinkWorks blends the disciplines of business and brand strategy, behavioural science, and storytelling art to produce messaging tactics that persuade effectively.
Jonathan is a graduate of Wits Business School, has trained in strategic modelling at Aix-Marseille University in France, and is certified in behavioural economics, brand, and narrative science. He is also the author of the e-books The Power of Brand Story and BrainSell. His work has earned several accolades, including the IMM Marketing Company of the Year award, a Deloitte Best Company to Work For award, and a PSA Innovator of the Year award.
To find out if ThinkWorks can help your organisation influence the minds you target, contact ThinkWorks for a no-obligation exploration.
📩 jonh@thinkworks.co.za | 📞 +27 83 251 0716
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