It was with mixed feelings that Hal Hershfield sat down for a video chat with a serial killer. But Hershfield, a behavioral economist at the University of California, Los Angeles, thought Pedro Rodrigues Filho could teach him something about how we can all make better decisions.
Rodrigues spent a total of 41 years in prison for the murder of 71 people and other crimes. In their conversation, he described to Hershfield how, one day, his mindset changed dramatically. While in solitary confinement after killing a fellow inmate who attacked him, he said he spoke to God and vowed to change.
After his second release from prison, in 2018, Rodrigues claimed to have stopped killing, started to exercise and began educating others about the dangers of crime on YouTube. “I consider myself a new person now,” he told Hershfield.
This step change was “a concrete example of how we can be different over time,” says Hershfield. In his book, your future meHershfield shows that people who feel close to their future selves — and realize they may be different from their current selves — make better decisions, like exercising and stay on the right side of the law. They tend to have best university grades, senior finance And greater well-being.
Unlike Rodrigues, you don’t need a religious epiphany to make such a change. Hershfield is testing various techniques to enable us to engage with our future selves, including writing them letters and even talking to them virtual reality – it could transform not only your relationship with yourself, but also your behavior in the…