Discrepancies between people's ought selves and their actual selves and their ideal selves and actual selves predict the emotions that individuals experience. The authors predicted that internal versus external causal attributions for self-discrepancies should moderate the relationship between self-discrepancies and emotions, resulting in more refined predictions for both agitation- and dejecti...

To investigate the neural basis of self-evaluation across time as a function of emotional valence, event-related potentials were recorded among participants instructed to make self-reference judgments when evaluating their past, present and future selves. Results showed that, when evaluating present and past selves, negative words elicited a more positive ERP deflection in the time window betwe...

Many people fail to save what they will need for retirement. Research on excessive discounting of the future suggests that removing the lure of immediate rewards by precommitting to decisions or elaborating the value of future rewards both can make decisions more future oriented. The authors explore a third and complementary route, one that deals not with present and future rewards but with pre...