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 they give the specific self-relevant form, meaning, organization, and direction to these dynamics. Possible selves are important, first, because they function as incentives for future behavior (i.e., they are selves to be approached or avoided) and second, because they provide an evaluative and interpretive context for the current view of self. A discussion of the nature and function of possible selves is followed by an exploration of their role in addressing several persistent problems, including the stability and malleability of the self, the unity of the self, self-distortion, and the relationship between the self-concept and behavior. Self-concept research has revealed the great diversity and complexity of self-knowledge and its importance in regulating behavior (of. Carver & Scheier, 1982; Gergen, 1972; Greenwald & Pratkanis, 1984; Higgins, 1983; Kihlstrom & Cantor, 1984; McGuire & McGuire, 1982). But there is one critical domain of self-knowledge that remains unexplored. It is the domain of possible selves. This type of self-knowledge pertains to how individuals think about their potential and about their future. Possible selves are the ideal selves that we would very much like to become. They are also the selves we could become, and the selves we are afraid of becoming. The possible selves that are hoped for might include the successful self, the creative self, the rich self, the thin self, or the loved and admired self, whereas the dreaded possible selves could be the alone self, the depressed self, the incompetent self, the alcoholic self, the unemployed self, or the bag lady self. An individual's repertoire of possible selves can be viewed as the cognitive manifestation of enduring goals, aspirations, motives, fears, and threats. Possible selves provide the specific self-relevant form, meaning, organization, and direction to these dynamics. As such, they provide the essential link between the self-concept and motivation. The assistant professor who fears he or she will not become an associate professor carries with him or her much more than a shadowy, undifferentiated fear of not getting tenure. Instead the fear is personalized, and the professor is likely to have a well-elaborated possible self that represents this fearmthe self as having failed, as looking for another job, as bitter, as a writer who can't get a novel published. Similarly, the person who hopes to lose 20 pounds does not harbor this hope in vague abstraction, but rather holds a vivid possible self--the self as thinner, more attractive, happier, with an altogether more pleasant life. In this article we examine the theoretical features of possible selves and illustrate some of the important ways in which they mediate personal functioning. In particular, possible selves are linked to the dynamic properties of the self-concept--to motivation, to distortion, and to change, both momentary and enduring. A discussion of the nature and function of possible selves is followed by an exploration of the role of possible selves in a comprehensive theory of the self-concept. Possible Selves: A Definition Antecedents of Possible Selves Possible selves derive from representations of the self in the past and they include representations of the self in the future. They are different and separable from the current or now selves, yet are intimately connected to them. Possible future selves, for example, are not just any set of imagined roles or states of being. Instead they represent specific, individually significant hopes, fears, and fantasies. I am now a psychologist, but I couldbe a restaurant owner, a marathon runner, a journalist, or the parent of a handicapped child. These possible selves are individualized or personalized, but they are also distinctly social. Many of these possible selves are the direct result of previous social comparisons in which the individual's own thoughts, feelings, characteristics, and behaviors have been contrasted to those of salient others. What others are now, I could become. An individual is free to create any variety of possible selves, yet the pool of possible selves derives from the categories made salient by the individual's particular sociocultural and historical context and from the models, images, and symbols provided by the media and by the individual's immediate social experiences. Possible selves thus have the potential to reveal the inventive and constructive nature of the self but they also reflect the extent to which the self is socially determined and constrained (el. Elder, 1980; Meyer, 1985; Stryker, 1984). The 1984 Olympic games probably created powerful possible selves for some young runners. Many no doubt absorbed the performance of Carl Lewis within the realm of their own 954 September 1986 9 American Psychologist Copyright 1986 by the American Psycholosical Association, Inc. 0003-066X/86/$00.75 Vol. 41, No. 9, 954-969 possible selves, just as Carl Lewis claimed to have used the early track victories of Jesse Owens to create a possible self and to give a specific cognitive form to his desire to become the world's fastest runner. Similarly Geraldine Ferraro fostered the creation of a new possible self, that of a political self, a leader self, for many American women. And James Fixx, the expert on running who died of a heart attack while jogging, was the source of a compelling negative possible self for many runners. Past selves, to the extent that they may define an individual again in the future, can also be possible selves. An adult, for example, will never be an eight-year-old child again. Some critical aspects of the child self, however, may remain within the self-concept as a possible self (see Block, 1981; Brim & Kagan, 1980). And under some circumstances, this self-view may be activated and become influential in directing behavior, such as in a visit home over the holidays. The selves of the past that remain and that are carried within the self-concept as possible selves are representative of the individual's enduring concerns and the actions that gave rise to these concerns. Thus, the successful possible self may include the fact that "I once got the best grades in my class." The socially anxious possible self is linked with the memory that "I used to be afraid of people." And the unwanted possible self is tied to the painful image of always being "the last one chosen for the softball team." Development can be seen as a process of acquiring and then achieving or resisting certain possible selves. Through the selection and construction of possible selves individuals can be viewed as active producers of their own development (e.g., Kendall, Lerner, & Craighead, 1984; Lerner, 1982). Consequences of Possible Selves: A Cognitive Approach A focus on the self-knowledge that accompanies an individual's goals, fears, and threats is a natural extension of a cognitive approach to the study of the self-concept. In this approach the self-concept is viewed as a system of affective-cognitive structures (also called theories or schemas) about the self that lends structure and coherence to the individual's self-relevant experiences. (For a full discussion of these and related ideas, see Epstein, 1973; Greenwald & Pratkanis, 1984; Kihlstrom & Cantor, 1984; Markus & Sentis, 1982; Markus & Wurf, in press; Rogers, 1981.) Self-schemas are constructed creatively and selectively from an individual's past experiences in a particular domain. They reflect personal concerns of enduring salience and investment, and they have been shown to have a systematic and pervasive influence on how information about the self is processed. In particular domains, these well-elaborated structures of the self shape the perceiver's This research was supported by Grant BNS-8408057 from the National Science Foundation. The authors would like to thank Nancy Cantor and Robert Zajonc for valuable suggestions on an earlier draft of this article. Correspondence concerning this article should be addressed to Hazel Markus, Institute for Social Research, University of Michigan, Ann Arbor, MI 48106. expectations. Moreover, they determine which stimuli are selected for attention, which stimuli are remembered, and what type of inferences are drawn (e.g., Greenwald & Pratkanis, 1984; Kihlstrom & Cantor, 1984; Markus, 1983; Markus & Sentis, 1982). In this way, the self-concept becomes a significant regulator of the individual's behavior. The recent empirical work from this cognitive perspective lends strong support to many ideas of the early self theorists (e.g., Allport, 1943; Kelly, 1955; Krech & Crutchfield, 1948; Snygg & Combs, 1949) who argued that the self-structure is the most important in the psychological field and is the one that organizes the individual's interpretations of the world. Studies on the functions of self-knowledge have focused nearly exclusively on how well-substantiated or factual self-conceptions constrain information processing. But individuals also have ideas about themselves that are not as well anchored in social reality. They have ideas, beliefs, and images about their potential and about their goals, hopes, fears. This is particularly so in those domains that are important for self-definition. To be sure, this selfknowledge is of a different type than the self-knowledge of one's gender, or race, or the self-knowledge of one's preferences or habits. Most obviously, as representations of the self in future states, possible selves are views of the self that often have not been verified or confirmed by social experience (cf. Epstein, 1973; Snyder, Tanke, & Berscheid, 1977; Swarm, 1983). Yet self-knowledge of this type should not be dismissed, for it is entirely possible that this variety of self-knowledge also exerts a significant influence on individual functioning, and it is the purpose of this article to explore the nature of this influence. We suggest first that possible selves are important because they function as incentives for future behavior (i.e., they are selves to be approached or avoided), and second, because they provide an evaluative and interpretive context for the current view of self. With respect to the first function, self-knowledge not only provides a set of interpretive frameworks for making sense of past behavior, it also provides the means-ends patterns for new behavior. Individuals' self-knowledge of what is possible for them to achieve is motivation as it is particularized and individualized; it serves to frame behavior, and to guide its course. In this role possible selves function as the personalized carriers (representations) of general aspirations, motives, and threats and of the associated affective states. They serve to select among future behaviors (i.e., they are selves to be approached or to be avoided). The second important function of possible selves derives from their role in providing a context of additional meaning for the individual's current behavior. Attributes, abilities, and actions of the self are not evaluated in isolation. Their interpretation depends on the surrounding context of possibility. Thus, the student with a physician possible self will attach a different interpretation to a grade of A in organic chemistry than will someone without this possible self. Similarly, the person with the alone or lonely possible self is likely to imbue a broken lunch date with September 1986 9 American Psychologist 955 much greater negative significance than someone without this negative possible self. Possible selves furnish criteria against which outcomes are evaluated. Further, because possible selves are not well-anchored in social experience, they comprise the selfknowledge that is the most vulnerable and responsive to changes in the environment. They are the first elements of the self-concept to absorb and reveal such change. As representations of potential, possible selves will thus be particularly sensitive to those situations that communicate new or inconsistent information about the self. A poor grade on an exam will not permanently challenge an individual's enduring sense of self as "intelligent" or "hardworking," but it will give temporary substance to a possible self as "drop-out" or "academic failure." And the activation of these possible selves will influence the individual's current self-evaluation of intelligence.