Possible selves
The future selves we hope to become, expect to become, or fear becoming — and how they pull behavior now.
What it means
Possible selves are the cognitive representations of what individuals could become, would like to become, and are afraid of becoming, forming the bridge between the present self-concept and future motivation. They function as incentives, giving goals a vivid, personalized image, and as interpretive frames that lend meaning to current effort. Motivation is strongest when a hoped-for self is paired with a feared self in the same domain and is accompanied by concrete strategies linking present action to the imagined outcome; a hoped-for self with no roadmap tends to fizzle. The nuance is that possible selves are socially and culturally supplied, so deprived environments can constrain which futures even seem imaginable. They matter because they explain how identity-based imagination steers persistence, especially in education.
Examples
A first-generation student who vividly pictures herself as a doctor — and dreads becoming stuck like relatives in jobs she fears — studies harder when both images are paired with a study plan.
A smoker who pictures himself hiking with his kids, and dreads the version tethered to an oxygen tank, quits more readily when both images come with a dated plan.
A shop assistant who has never met a working engineer cannot picture herself as one; the future stays too dim to pull any effort, however capable she actually is.
First described in Hazel Markus & Paula Nurius (1986).