Fabrice Etilé

Identity, self-continuity and time discounting (joint with Rémi Yin, PSE)

Abstract:

Identity is defined by individual’s responses to the question “who are you?”. These responses refer to aspects of individual identity that can be classified as personal (or private), relational (one’s role vis-à-vis important others), social (public roles) or collective (identification with groups). Various works in philosophy and psychology have discussed the relationship between people’s identity, their subjective sense of continuity over time and monetary time discounting. In this research, we examine the relationships between the four specific aspects of identity, future self-continuity and time-discounting, through a series of on-line surveys and experiments. We validate a French version of the Aspects of Identity Questionnaire, that measures the relative importance of personal, relational, social and collective identity to the people’s subjective sense of who they are. We find that continuity between the present self and more or less remote future selves is perceived to be higher in subjects for whom relational or collective identities are more central and social identity is less central. Priming the instability of relational identity decreases future self-continuity and monetary discount rates, while priming the instability of personal identity has little effect. In contrast to previous studies, our results thus suggest that personal identity is not central in subjective perception of future self-continuity.