Skip to Main Content
HBS Home
  • About
  • Academic Programs
  • Alumni
  • Faculty & Research
  • Baker Library
  • Giving
  • Harvard Business Review
  • Initiatives
  • News
  • Recruit
  • Map / Directions
Faculty & Research
  • Faculty
  • Research
  • Featured Topics
  • Academic Units
  • …→
  • Harvard Business School→
  • Faculty & Research→
Publications
Publications
  • May 2008
  • Journal Article
  • Organizational Behavior and Human Decision Processes

Future Lock-in: Future Implementation Increases Selection of 'Should' Choices

By: Todd Rogers and Max Bazerman
  • Format:Print
  • | Pages:20
ShareBar

Abstract

People often experience tension over certain choices (e.g., they should reduce their gas consumption or increase their savings, but they do not want to). Some posit that this tension arises from the competing interests of a deliberative “should” self and an affective “want” self. We show that people are more likely to select choices that serve the should self (should-choices) when the choices will be implemented in the distant rather than the near previous future. This “future lock-in” is demonstrated in four experiments for should-choices involving donation, public policy, and self-improvement. Additionally, we show that previous future lock term-in can arise without changing the structure of a should-choice, but by just changing people's temporal focus. Finally, we provide evidence that they should self operates at a higher construal level (abstract, superordinate) than the want self, and that this difference in construal partly underlies previous future lock-in.

Keywords

Decision Choices and Conditions; Research; Behavior; Conflict of Interests

Citation

Rogers, Todd, and Max Bazerman. "Future Lock-in: Future Implementation Increases Selection of 'Should' Choices." Organizational Behavior and Human Decision Processes 106, no. 1 (May 2008): 1–20.
  • Find it at Harvard

About The Author

Max H. Bazerman

Negotiation, Organizations & Markets
→More Publications

More from the Authors

    • 2022
    • Behavioral Science & Policy

    Leadership & Overconfidence

    By: Don A Moore and Max H. Bazerman
    • 2022
    • Faculty Research

    Complicit: How We Enable the Unethical and How to Stop

    By: Max H. Bazerman
    • 2022
    • Faculty Research

    Redirecting Rawlsian Reasoning Toward the Greater Good

    By: Joshua D. Greene, Karen Huang and Max Bazerman
More from the Authors
  • Leadership & Overconfidence By: Don A Moore and Max H. Bazerman
  • Complicit: How We Enable the Unethical and How to Stop By: Max H. Bazerman
  • Redirecting Rawlsian Reasoning Toward the Greater Good By: Joshua D. Greene, Karen Huang and Max Bazerman
ǁ
Campus Map
Harvard Business School
Soldiers Field
Boston, MA 02163
→Map & Directions
→More Contact Information
  • Make a Gift
  • Site Map
  • Jobs
  • Harvard University
  • Trademarks
  • Policies
  • Accessibility
  • Digital Accessibility
Copyright © President & Fellows of Harvard College