robust relationship between psychological connectedness and discount rates. The more psychologically connectedness people feel between present and future selves, the more they care about the future, and the less they discount future benefits. Manipulating psychological connectedness The research that followed showed systematic ways to enhance psychological connectedness. Experiments have manipulated connectedness by having participants: Interact with a visual depiction of their future self (increased connectedness) List ways in which they expect to be similar to themselves in the future (increased connectedness) Expect an upcoming event (e.g., college graduation) to fundamentally change who they are (decreased connectedness) The randomized experiments revealed a causal relationship between feeling connected to one's future self and subsequently making more patient long-term decisions. Policy applications Finances In one of the first experiments to enhance psychological connectedness with the future self, participants were given immersive virtual reality technology and instructed to look at themselves in a virtual mirror. The experimenters randomized whether participants saw an age-progressed version of themselves (meant to look approximately 70 years old) or a current-aged self. Participants that interacted with their future self were more likely to delay present monetary rewards and indicated greater intentions to save for retirement. Leveraging the insights from this experiment, firms such as Merrill Lynch have since adopted web applications with age-progressing software in order to increase retirement savings. The finding has been conceptually replicated with multiple diverse samples. In one field experiment, students from economically diverse backgrounds that had weekly interactions with an avatar of their future self demonstrated heightened performance during a financial education course. A team of researchers, in collaboration with Ideas42, launched another replication with thousands of Mexican citizens. Before deciding whether to sign-up for an automatic savings account, the treatment group was asked to spend time vividly imagining their lives in the distant future. Compared to a 1% take up rate in the control condition, 3% of people in the treatment condition enrolled in the automatic savings account. The effect of psychological connectedness on financial decision making is moderated by knowledge about future outcomes. When people are unaware of their future financial needs, regardless of how connected they feel, they are unlikely to save for the future. Similarly, people that have full information about the consequences of their financial actions will only save if they also feel connectedness with their future self. The researchers argue that policy makers who provide information to consumers