Younger Self Advice

Younger Self Advice

First systematic study of the advice people would give to their younger selves

If you could travel back in time, what advice would you give to your younger self? It’s a popular thought experiment that has recently been the subject of a study in the United States. *Christian Jarrett, from BPS Research Digest, reports.

US researchers Robin Kowalski and Annie McCord of Clemson University conducted two surveys of hundreds of participants on Amazon’s Mechanical Turk website. Their findings, published in **The Journal of Social Psychology, show that people’s advice to their younger selves is overwhelmingly focused on prior relationships, educational opportunities and personal worth.

–  Provide either three pieces or one piece of advice to their younger selves;
–  Reflect on whether they had actually followed the advice later in life;
–  Reflect on what their younger self would make of their current self.


Most participants said that the advice they offered was tied to a pivotal event in their past, e.g. a bullying incident, a relationship breakup, or an incident involving drink or drugs, and about half the time they had regret for what had happened. The timing of these pivotal events was most commonly between age 10 and 30 (consistent with research into the reminiscence bump – the way that we tend to recall more autobiographical memories from our teens and early adulthood).



This is an unexplored topic and the results could differ in other cultures and using other methods of gathering data. The work does, however, raise further interesting research questions, such as how the advice we give our past selves might vary in quantity and kind as we get older; and how following the advice might affect our emotions and hope for the future.

*Dr Christian Jarrett was Founding Editor of BPS Research Digest. In July he became Senior Editor at Aeon magazine, working on their forthcoming Psyche channel devoted to psychological wellbeing.
**If I knew then what I know now: Advice to my younger self, Robin Kowalski and Annie McCord, The Journal of Social Psychology

Photo by Aaron Andrew Ang