Why we can’t ever imagine getting old

Researchers at Harvard University have discovered a phenomenon that has been named as the "the end of history illusion" in which people mistakenly believe that they are always the finished product.

A survey of 19,000 people found that when people looked back in retrospection it was easy to see how much they had changed, the Daily Mail reported.

However, when they looked into the future they were rarely able to see how different they were going to be.

The findings have helped to explain why a teenager who gets inked believes that he/she will never regret it, even if they do so later.

Similarly, when people get older the prospect of grey hair is not something that they can imagine.

The researchers asked the respondents in the age group of 18 to 68, about their values, personalities and things that they liked to do.

Some participants of the study were asked to reflect back over the last 10 years while others were told to predict how they will change in the next decade.

The team found that across all age ranges, everyone underestimated how much they would have changed in the future.

Lead researcher Daniel Gilbert, a psychologist at Harvard University, said that the study revealed that a 40-year-old looking back would remember more looking back, than a 30-year-old would do looking forward.

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