While we routinely make sacrifices for the people we feel closest to — our spouses, children and parents — and will even give money or our time to help complete strangers like the homeless, the one person whose plight we may actually ignore is our future self.

“When people think of themselves in the future, it feels to them like they are seeing a different person entirely … like a stranger on the street,” said Hal Hershfield, a social psychologist at UCLA Anderson who is exploring how human behavior…