Dual Self Model

What is a dual-self model?

A dual-self model represents conflicting priorities within one person as a conflict between two “selves.” In Thaler and Shefrin’s planner–doer account, the analogy is to an organization whose members care about different time horizons.

The planner and the doer

The planner considers longer-term consequences. The doer cares about the current period. A person who plans to save but later wants to spend illustrates the conflict. The two selves are roles in an economic model, not separate personalities or brain structures.

Fudenberg and Levine develop a related impulse-control model with costs of self-control. It accommodates evidence that heavier cognitive demands can make temptation harder to resist.

Why it matters

The model helps explain interest in precommitment: choosing a constraint now because you expect to want something different later. It also makes the conflict concrete without assuming that the present-focused side is always emotional or that the long-term plan is always best. The consequences of a commitment still matter.

A precommitment example

Imagine someone who wants to reserve $200 for a course in six months. They choose to put it in an account that, in this hypothetical arrangement, does not permit withdrawals until then. Later, they would prefer to use the money for a weekend purchase, but the earlier restriction prevents that choice. The planner selected the constraint while considering the course; the doer's later preference cannot change the withdrawal rule.

The constraint has a real cost: the money is also unavailable if an unexpected need arises. That lost flexibility is part of what the person gives up by making the commitment. The model helps explain why a person might willingly restrict future options; it does not prove that doing so will leave them better off.

Sources: An Economic Theory of Self-Control; A Dual-Self Model of Impulse Control.