Other Selves

A Garden of Identities: Multiple Selves and Other Futures

I close my eyes and think of a future world. A visionary world, thirty, forty years from today. A world not of new humanity but a plethora of old and new humanities. A world where more than one of way of being human is not only the norm but is considered essential for the very survival of our species. This is the world as a garden. Gardens, by the very fact that they are gardens, consist of a m...

Other Selves: An Artistic Study of the Human Microbiome

We are made of many parts and many types of parts. Many of these are alive, and as the study of the human microbiome has recently revealed, most are not human. I explore the microbiome as an artistic medium and the questions it raises about identity, since the microbiome blurs the boundary between organism and environment, figure and ground. I cultivated my microbiome and others inhabiting my e...

Possible Selves

The concept of possible selves is introduced to complement current conceptions of self-knowledge. Possible selves represent individuals' ideas of what they might become, what they would like to become, and what they are afraid of becoming, and thus provide a conceptual link between cognition and motivation. Possible selves are the cognitive components of hopes, fears, goals, and threats, and th...

True Selves, False Selves, and the Ambiguity of Authenticity

Possible selves as roadmaps

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...