Leiden University Student Repository

Spiga, Delfina (2026)

Chatten met je toekomstige zelf: De invloed van een AI-toekomstige zelf op de toekomstige zelfidentificatie en toekomstgericht gedrag.

Master thesis | Education and Child Studies (MSc)

In this study, an intervention was tested in which participants engaged in a conversation with a conversational agent in the form of an AI-generated version of their ten-year older self. The study employed pre-post design with a sample of 196 young adults (age range 18-25, 45.4% female, 52.0% male and 2.6% unkown.). Before the interaction participants completed questionnaires that formed the synthetic memory of the chatbot. This memory contained personal information, such as social relationships, emotion regulation and behavior. This allows the AI-future self to generate personal reflections and retrieve relevant information during the conversation. This way a realistic and meaningful narrative can be formed. During this interaction, participants had the opportunity to ask questions about their future and to reflect on their current life. It was hypothesized that future self-identification, consisting of vividness, connectedness and valance, would show a significant increase after...Show moreIn this study, an intervention was tested in which participants engaged in a conversation with a conversational agent in the form of an AI-generated version of their ten-year older self. The study employed pre-post design with a sample of 196 young adults (age range 18-25, 45.4% female, 52.0% male and 2.6% unkown.). Before the interaction participants completed questionnaires that formed the synthetic memory of the chatbot. This memory contained personal information, such as social relationships, emotion regulation and behavior. This allows the AI-future self to generate personal reflections and retrieve relevant information during the conversation. This way a realistic and meaningful narrative can be formed. During this interaction, participants had the opportunity to ask questions about their future and to reflect on their current life. It was hypothesized that future self-identification, consisting of vividness, connectedness and valance, would show a significant increase after interacting with the AI-Future self-compared to pre-exposure levels on these variables. In addition, it was expected that future-oriented behavior would increase and that the duration of the interaction would positively influence both outcomes. To test these hypotheses repeated measures ANOVAs were conducted. Results showed a significant increase in the future self-identification after the intervention, suggesting that the AI-Future self may be effective in strengthening the sense of connection with one’s future self. However, no significant increase in future-oriented behavior was found. In addition, the duration of the interaction did not influence changes in either future self-identification or future-oriented behavior. Although there is room for further improvements, the results indicate that the use of the AI-future self could be promising in strengthing future self-identification and future-oriented thinking.Show less

Future self- identification, future-oriented behavior, temporal discounting, conversational agents, Artificial intelligence, pre-post design, young adults.

Author

Spiga, Delfina

Faculty

Faculty of Social & Behavioural Sciences

Specialisation

Orthopedagogiek

Supervisors

J-L. van Gelder

ECTS Credits

20

Language

nl