Possible selves as roadmaps

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Abstract

Possible selves, expectations, and concerns about the coming year, can promote feeling good (“I may not be doing well in school this year, but I will next year.”) or can promote regulating for oneself (“I may not be doing well in school this year, but to make sure I do better next year, I have signed up for summer tutoring.”). We hypothesized that improved academic outcomes were likely only when a possible self could plausibly be a self-regulator. Hierarchical regression analyses supported this conclusion, with more support for the influence of self-regulation on change in behavior and academic outcomes than on affect regulation. N=160 low-income eighth graders improved grades, spent more time doing homework, participated in class more, and were referred less to summer school (controlling for fall grades and the dependent variable of interest) when academic possible selves were plausibly self-regulatory.

Introduction

Next year, I expect to be… “13 years old, playing football (I am going to practice this year), in high school, playing basketball (I am coming to my games this year).” Next year I want to avoid… “drugs (I am getting away from that, not doing drugs this year), being killed (I am getting away from people that are crazy this year).” (Possible selves of an inner city eighth grader, fall of eighth grade, with strategies noted in parentheses.)

Next year, I expect to be… “getting good grades in school (I am staying out of trouble and not talking too much this year), going to high school (I am paying attention in class and doing my work this year).” Next year, I want to avoid… “Failing 8th grade (I am not skipping class and am doing my work this year), dropping out of high school (I am not being lazy and not getting in trouble this year).” (Possible selves of an inner city eighth grader, fall of eighth grade, with strategies noted in parentheses.)

Next year I expect to be… “going to high school (I am studying and doing good in the 8th grade), going to King High School (by turning in my high school application and preparing for the test), studying well and passing all my grades (by not getting in trouble and being serious about my studies).” Next year I want to avoid… “Being a class clown (by listening to the teacher and being quiet in class), not having good grades” (by studying and doing my work), and going the wrong direction in life (by being serious about school).” (Possible selves of an inner city eighth grader, fall of eighth grade, with strategies noted in parentheses.)

These are written responses of eighth graders to questions about what they expect to be like next year, what they want to avoid being like next year, and, in parentheses, their responses to the follow-up question for each possible self, “Is there anything you are doing now to get to be this way (or to avoid becoming this way)?” While all three youths mention being in high school, the question motivating our research was whether these possible selves were equally effective in maintaining positive affect, sustaining goal focused behavior, and fostering successful academic outcomes over the course of the school year. A number of authors have argued that having a self-relevant plan, goal, possible self, or personal striving in a domain should improve self-regulation (for reviews see Markus & Wurf, 1987; Oyserman, 2001). Indeed, having a plan focuses attention; goal-focused individuals are more likely to ignore information irrelevant to their chosen goals, which allows for more focus on the goal (Gollwitzer, 1996).

While in laboratory settings, shifts in goals, personal strivings, or self-motivation clearly influence mood, behavior, and outcomes (Coats, Janoff-Bulman, & Alpert, 1996; Rawsthorne & Elliott, 1999), in more naturalistic settings, personal striving, possible selves, goals or resolutions are often vague and not connected with action plans that detail when, where, and how to proceed toward the goal. To regulate behavior, the self-concept must contain not only goals or desired end states, but also strategies about how to behave in order to reach the desired end state (e.g., ‘I can make it to high school by paying attention in class’ (Higgins, 1996)). Perhaps it should come as no surprise, then, that people often fail to attain their goals (Gollwitzer, 1996).

Goals, strivings, and possible selves may serve functions other than self-regulation. They can facilitate optimism and belief that change is possible because they provide the sense that the current self is mutable (Markus & Nurius, 1986). Thus goals or possible selves may simply make us feel good about ourselves, particularly if the goal or future self is vague and carries no specified action plan (Gonzales, Burgess, & Mobilio, 2001). Indeed, a dominant self-goal is simply to feel good about the self—to self-enhance (Brown, 1998). By allowing one to feel good about the self and providing hope for a better future, personal strivings, possible selves, and other future oriented aspects of self-concept may fulfill self-enhancement goals. For example, a student may say to herself, ‘I may not be doing well in school now but I will succeed next year,’ in this way buffering self-esteem from current bad grades, though not engaging in any behavioral strategies to actually increase the chance of earning better grades in the coming year.

Supporting this notion, Gonzales et al. (2001) found that articulating a goal elevated mood, improved well being and created a sense of optimism about the likelihood of attaining the goal for participants, compared with participants who did not articulate a goal. Self-enhancing possible selves promote positive feelings and maintain a sense of optimism and hope for the future without evoking behavioral strategies.

Yet there is also evidence that setting goals and raising aspiration can improve performance. Through self-directed goals, we can harness motivation and direct action toward self-improvement (Brickman & Bulman, 1977; Taylor, Neter, & Wayment, 1995). In this sense, possible selves and other self-directed goals can serve to guide and regulate behavior, providing a roadmap connecting the present to the future. The more plans connect self-directed goals to specific strategies; the more likely they are to be carried out (Gollwitzer, 1996). Indeed there is evidence that even relatively straightforward self-regulation strategies like telling oneself ‘pay attention’ or ‘work hard’ can influence outcomes in laboratory settings (Gollwitzer, 2002). In the current paper, we focus on youths living in high poverty neighborhoods and attending urban schools with mostly low-income minority peers. We ask if detailed academic possible selves that contain strategies for working on them will succeed in promoting successful academic engagement—a sense of connection to school, on-task behavior in class, and better grades, even among youths at high risk of academic failure or whether it is enough to have many academically oriented possible selves.

To study the effects of self-regulatory possible selves, we focus on academic possible selves among low-income adolescents for a number of reasons. We focus on academics because school is a central domain of adolescence and success in school provides a basis for a successful transition into adulthood. A number of studies suggest that school, education, and future occupations are among the most common foci of young teens’ possible selves (Knox, Funk, Elliott, & Bush, 2000; Shepard & Marshall, 1999), and that students who see school as central to their future success have higher current well-being (Cameron, 1999).

We focus on minority youths because self-regulation of academic behavior may be particularly important for youths facing stereotypes about their academic interest and abilities. Without the ability to self-regulate, these youths may be particularly vulnerable to stereotype threat (Steele, 1997). Moreover, qualitative research suggests variability in focus on school success among minority groups (Kao, 2000). We focus on adolescence because a focus on the future is intrinsic to the social role of adolescence. Adolescent self-concepts are open to social feedback from peers, the media, parents, and other adults. Youths actively seek evidence of who they might become through social interactions, the responses of others to their behavior, as well as from role models and internalized standards (Harter, 1985).

Indeed, some possible selves are quite malleable, shifting in response to feedback either about one’s own likely success in attaining the possible self (Kerpelman & Pittman, 2001) or similar others’ successes and failures in attaining the possible self (Kemmelmeier & Oyserman, 2001). These possible selves are unlikely to serve self-regulatory functions. We speculate, however, that when young adolescents feel committed to and invested in working toward attaining possible selves and link current behaviors to attainment of these future goals, then possible selves can serve a self-regulatory role. By both focusing attention on a self-defining goal and linking the goal to current action, these ‘self-regulating’ possible selves can preserve positive affect, maintain behavioral focus, and ultimately propel the self toward the goal, in contrast to self-enhancing possible selves that do not.

Research to date has not disentangled the self-enhancing and self-regulatory functions of possible selves, focusing instead on describing content of possible selves and correlating content with outcomes more generally, for example assessing the frequency that positive and negative academic possible selves are generated and the correlation between that and academic success or involvement in delinquent activities (cf. Aloise-Young, Hennigan, & Leong, 2001; Oyserman & Markus, 1990). Even when a more complex coding strategy is used—such as the work focused on ‘balance’ in possible selves (Oyserman & Markus, 1990), how the regulatory focus of possible selves would be instantiated was given short shrift. Rather than simply focus on whether youths mention success in school as a self-goal, or whether they mention both an expectation of success and a concern about failure, we hypothesized that academic possible selves differ in whether they are ‘self-regulating’ or ‘self-enhancing’ possible selves. We propose that academic possible selves will guide behavior and produce the intended regulatory consequence over time only when they are detailed and contain strategies for carrying out the goal. Thus, we propose that self-regulation is best achieved when possible selves are detailed and contain strategies for both personal goal focused action and for dealing and engaging with the social context in which the goal is to be achieved. For example, the possible selves of the eighth graders quoted above all include being in high school, yet only the latter two youths describe specific strategies for succeeding in school (“paying attention in class and doing my work this year”) and avoiding failure (“I am not being lazy and not getting in trouble this year.”) Conversely, the first youth envisions being in high school but lacks any strategies to insure success or to avoid failure in this domain. Moreover, only the third youth describes self-regulation focused on the social context of school—proposing to avoid being the class clown by listening to the teacher and being quiet in class. While all youths have possible selves about being in high school, only one of the youths has a detailed possible self beyond the broad sketched outlines of high school (“going to King High School,” “studying well and passing all my grades”) noting which high school and what the self would be doing at that high school.

In the current study, we examine these differences in the ways that possible selves are instantiated, predicting that only possible selves that are detailed and connected with specific behavioral strategies can sustain self-regulation over time and therefore be guides for self-improvement. We propose that vague, general possible selves lacking behavioral strategies cannot function to guide self-regulation because they neither provide a specific picture of one’s goals nor a roadmap of how to reduce discrepancies between the present and one’s future possible selves (Carver, 2001). We are particularly interested in the impact that possible selves have on academic outcomes among otherwise disadvantaged youths—minority youths attending inner city public schools and living in low-income neighborhoods. These youths must figure out a plan of action to succeed in school in spite of these risk factors as well as risks from stereotypes about their interest in school, their academic ability, and their likelihood of succeeding in the world of work beyond school. Therefore, for these youths, having detailed academic possible selves that engender self-regulation and articulate strategies that take into account the social context of school may be particularly critical mechanisms of sustaining positive affect about school, positive behavioral engagement with school and school activities, and in the end, more success in school—obtaining better grades and reducing risk of school failure.

Youths whose academic possible selves are self-regulating (provide a better road map for guiding affect and behavior) will be more successful in the domain of school. Specifically, youths with more self-regulatory academic possible selves will: (a) be better able to focus positive affect on school, (b) be more involved in classroom activities, (c) spend more time doing homework, (d) obtain better grades, and (e) be less at risk of referral to remedial summer school, resulting in improvement in these areas compared with their peers who have less self-regulatory academic possible selves. Since our focus is on self-regulatory academic possible selves—that is, detailed academic possible selves that contain strategies to promote self-regulation, rather than the simple presence of academic possible selves, we propose that (f) self-regulatory academic possible selves will be a better predictor of school success than a simple count of the number of academic possible selves or an assessment of the extent that academic possible selves are balanced—containing both a positive expectation and a fear or concern in the same domain. Finally, while self-regulation can be operationalized simply as a count of academic strategies, we examine the extent that the combination of detailed academic possible selves and strategies adds predictive power.

Section snippets

Sample

Students were a randomly selected half of the eighth grade cohort in three inner city middle schools serving low-income families (67.3% of students at the schools received free or reduced-price lunch). Students enrolled in these schools came from 105 mostly ethnic minority and high poverty census tracks. That is, in these census tracks, 34% of households had incomes below the poverty line, 57% of households were headed by African Americans and 23% were headed by Hispanics; 43% of the adults had

Analysis plan

To examine the effects of self-regulatory academic possible selves on positive affect in school, participation in class, time spent doing homework, grades, and risk of repeating eighth grade, we utilized a series of hierarchical regression equations, one for each dependent variable. For each dependent variable, we followed the same order of entry for the blocks of independent variables. At block one, we entered dummy variables for sex and race (white and Hispanic, with African American as the

Discussion

When asked to describe their expectations and concerns about what they will be like next year, even young teens have no trouble describing expected and feared possible selves—selves they expect to attain and those they would like to avoid. Asked if there is anything they are doing this year to get to be like their expected selves or avoid becoming like their feared selves, some youths have strategies, at least for some of their possible selves, while others do not. In our sample, the most

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