Hal Hershfield

Professor of Marketing, Behavioral Decision Making, and Psychology at UCLA Anderson's School of Management

About

Hal Hershfield is a prominent researcher and Professor of Marketing and Behavioral Decision Making at the UCLA Anderson School of Management. He earned his B.A. from Tufts University in 2001 and his Ph.D. in Psychology from Stanford University in 2009. Prior to his current appointment at UCLA, Dr. Hershfield served as an assistant professor at the NYU Stern School of Management and completed a postdoctoral fellowship at the Northwestern University Kellogg School of Management. His scholarly work focuses on decision-making, the psychology of long-term financial saving, and the intersection of future self-continuity and well-being. In addition to his academic roles, he contributes his expertise as an academic advisor and affiliate for various organizations, including ideas42, MasterClass, and Shaping Wealth, and numerous financial services institutions. The winner of many teaching and research awards, he is the author of Your Future Self: How To Make Tomorrow Better Today, and the host of The Behavioral Divide podcast.

Publications

Future self‐continuity: how conceptions of the future self transform intertemporal choice

Annals of the New York Academy of Sciences

2011

Human-Machine Interactions in Pricing: Evidence from Two Large-Scale Field Experiments

Unknown Venue

2024

Inflow neglect: Forecasting failures after stocks run out.

Journal of Experimental Psychology: General

2026

Simulating Life Paths with Digital Twins: AI-Generated Future Selves Influence Decision-Making and Expand Human Choice

Proceedings of the Augmented Humans International Conference 2026

2026

Future You: Designing and Evaluating Multimodal AI-generated Digital Twins for Strengthening Future Self-Continuity

Proceedings of the 31st International Conference on Intelligent User Interfaces

2026

Perspective-taking in capital punishment decisions

Behavioural Public Policy

2025

A national megastudy shows that email nudges to elementary school teachers boost student math achievement, particularly when personalized

Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences

2025

Exploring the distribution and correlates of future self-continuity in a large, nationally representative sample

Judgment and Decision Making

2025

Future You: A Conversation with an AI-Generated Future Self Reduces Anxiety, Negative Emotions, and Increases Future Self-Continuity

2024 IEEE Frontiers in Education Conference (FIE)

2024

Back to the Present: How Direction of Mental Time Travel Affects Similarity and Saving

Journal of Consumer Research

2024

A broad view of time predicts greater subjective well-being

Personality and Individual Differences

2024

Social inferences from choice context: Dominated options can engender distrust

Organizational Behavior and Human Decision Processes

2024

Addressing Climate Change with Behavioral Science: A Global Intervention Tournament in 63 Countries

Unknown Venue

2023

Adolescent Stressful Life Events Predict Future Self- Connectedness in Adulthood

The Journal of Early Adolescence

2023

Saving for retirement: A real-world test of whether seeing photos of one’s future self encourages contributions

Behavioral Science & Policy

2023

Consumer Financial Decision Making: Where We’ve Been and Where We’re Going

Journal of the Association for Consumer Research

2023

What Motivates Social Security Claiming Age Intentions? Testing Behaviorally Informed Interventions Alongside Individual Differences

Journal of Marketing Research

2023

The role of place attachment and environmental attitudes in adoption of rooftop solar

Energy Policy

2022

A 680,000-person megastudy of nudges to encourage vaccination in pharmacies

Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences

2022

Meaningful endings and mixed emotions: The double-edged sword of reminiscence on good times.

Emotion

2021

Beyond Stereotypes: Using Socioemotional Selectivity Theory to Improve Messaging to Older Adults

Current Directions in Psychological Science

2021

Having too little or too much time is linked to lower subjective well-being.

Journal of Personality and Social Psychology

2021

Pleas for patience from the cumulative future self

Behavioral and Brain Sciences

2021

Beliefs about Whether Spending Implies Wealth

Journal of Consumer Research

2020

Consumers Make Different Inferences and Choices When Product Uncertainty Is Attributed to Forgetting Rather than Ignorance

Journal of Consumer Research

2019

Temporal Reframing and Participation in a Savings Program: A Field Experiment

Marketing Science

2020

Perceptions of Collaborations: How Many Cooks Seem to Spoil the Broth?

Social Psychological and Personality Science

2019

When does the present end and the future begin?

Journal of Experimental Psychology: General

2020

Financial product sensitivity predicts financial health

Journal of Behavioral Decision Making

2019

Identity Over Time: Perceived Similarity Between Selves Predicts Well-Being 10 Years Later

Social Psychological and Personality Science

2019

On the naturalistic relationship between mood and entertainment choice.

Journal of Experimental Psychology: Applied

2019

Creative expertise is associated with transcending the here and now.

Journal of Personality and Social Psychology

2019

On shifting consumers from high‐interest to low‐interest debt

FINANCIAL PLANNING REVIEW

2019

Financial decision making

Consumer Psychology Review

2018

The self over time

Current Opinion in Psychology

2019

Using Vividness Interventions to Improve Financial Decision Making

Policy Insights from the Behavioral and Brain Sciences

2018

Future self-continuity is associated with improved health and increases exercise behavior.

Journal of Experimental Psychology: Applied

2018

Rethinking time: Implications for well‐being

Consumer Psychology Review

2017

Cousins or conjoined twins: how different are meaning and happiness in everyday life?

Comprehensive Results in Social Psychology

2017

Context matters: How macroeconomic forces may alter the reception of negative emotions in art

Behavioral and Brain Sciences

2017

Behaviorally Informed Policies for Household Financial Decisionmaking

Behavioral Science & Policy

2017

On the relationship between positive and negative affect: Their correlation and their co-occurrence.

Emotion

2017

The Illusion of Wealth and Its Reversal

Journal of Marketing Research

2016

People Who Choose Time Over Money Are Happier

Social Psychological and Personality Science

2016

Leveraging Psychological Insights to Encourage the Responsible Use of Consumer Debt

Perspectives on Psychological Science

2015

Seeking Lasting Enjoyment with Limited Money: Financial Constraints Increase Preference for Material Goods over Experiences

Journal of Consumer Research

2015

Predicting Advertising Success Beyond Traditional Measures: New Insights from Neurophysiological Methods and Market Response Modeling

Unknown Venue

2014

FRIENDS WITH MY FUTURE SELF: LONGITUDINAL VIVIDNESS INTERVENTION REDUCES DELINQUENCY

Criminology

2015

Mental simulation and meaning in life.

Journal of Personality and Social Psychology

2015

Dual payoff scenario warnings on credit card statements elicit suboptimal payoff decisions

Journal of Consumer Psychology

2014

Reply to Kühne et al.: Still good evidence that people search for meaning when they approach a new decade in chronological age

Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences

2015

People search for meaning when they approach a new decade in chronological age

Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences

2014

National Differences in Environmental Concern and Performance Are Predicted by Country Age

Psychological Science

2013

Vividness of the Future Self Predicts Delinquency

Psychological Science

2013

When Feeling Bad Can Be Good

Social Psychological and Personality Science

2012

You owe it to yourself: Boosting retirement saving with a responsibility-based appeal.

Journal of Experimental Psychology: General

2012

Mixed Emotional Experience Is Associated with and Precedes Improvements in Psychological Well-Being

PLoS ONE

2012

Short horizons and tempting situations: Lack of continuity to our future selves leads to unethical decision making and behavior

Organizational Behavior and Human Decision Processes

2012

Increasing Saving Behavior Through Age-Progressed Renderings of the Future Self

Journal of Marketing Research

2011

Emotional experience improves with age: Evidence based on over 10 years of experience sampling.

Psychology and Aging

2011

Company, Country, Connections

Psychological Science

2010

Age differences in poignancy: Cognitive reappraisal as a moderator.

Psychology and Aging

2010

A diffusion tensor imaging study of the anterior limb of the internal capsule in schizophrenia

Psychiatry Research: Neuroimaging

2010

Feeling happy and sad, but only seeing the positive: Poignancy and the positivity effect in attention

Motivation and Emotion

2009

Don’t stop thinking about tomorrow: Individual differences in future self-continuity account for saving

Judgment and Decision Making

2009

Saving for the future self: Neural measures of future self-continuity predict temporal discounting

Social Cognitive and Affective Neuroscience

2008

Poignancy: Mixed emotional experience in the face of meaningful endings.

Journal of Personality and Social Psychology

2008

Middle and Inferior Temporal Gyrus Gray Matter Volume Abnormalities in First-Episode Schizophrenia: An MRI Study

American Journal of Psychiatry

2006

Comparison of single-shot echo-planar and line scan protocols for diffusion tensor imaging1

Academic Radiology

2004

Diffusion Tensor Imaging and Its Application to Neuropsychiatric Disorders

Harvard Review of Psychiatry

2002

The Development of Future-Self Concepts in Adolescence

Unknown Venue

2026

Regulatory focus and thinking about the future versus reality.

Motivation Science

2021

Consumer Prediction

The Cambridge Handbook of Consumer Psychology

2015

Twists of fate: Moments in time and what might have been in the emergence of meaning.

The psychology of meaning.

2013

Any Second Could Be the Second: How Thinking About What Might Have Been Affects the Emergence of Meaning and Commitment Across the Adult Life Span

The Experience of Meaning in Life

2013

The Annuity Puzzle Revisited: Barriers, Behavior, and Policy Paths to Lifetime Income

Unknown Venue

2026

Food Research Institute, Stanford University

Food Policy

1978

Education

Stanford University

Ph.D., Psychology / December, 2009

Tufts University

B.A., Psychology/English / December, 2001

Stanford University

Ph.D., Psychology / December, 2009

Tufts University

B.A., Psychology/English / December, 2001

Experience

UCLA Anderson School of Management

Professor / July, 2021 — Present

Associate Professor / July, 2017 — June, 2021

Assistant Professor / July, 2014 — June, 2017

MasterClass

MasterClass Executive Instructor / February, 2026 — Present

Shaping Wealth

Academic Advisor / January, 2023 — Present

ideas42

Academic Affiliate / January, 2019 — Present

Longpath Labs

Academic Advisor / January, 2018 — Present

Morningstar

Academic Advisor / June, 2015 — June, 2025

Blueprint Income

Academic Advisor / January, 2014 — September, 2019

NYU Stern School of Business

Assistant Professor / August, 2011 — June, 2014

Northwestern University - Kellogg School of Management

Visiting Assistant Professor and Postdoctoral Fellow / July, 2009 — August, 2011

Stanford University

Graduate Student / September, 2003 — July, 2009

Harvard Medical School

Research Assistant / January, 2001 — December, 2003

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