This paper reports on a project in the North of England that looks at college-to-university decision-making processes non-traditional students through conceptual lens ‘Possible Selves’, as initially developed by Markus and Nurius (1986) applied to higher education Harrison (2018), Henderson (2019) others. Our data involves in-depth interviews with young people, college staff responsible for adv...

In this study I analyse the ghost story “Harry” (Timperley 1955) within paradigms of embodied cognition (Gallese 2005, 2017), cognitive ambiguity (Zeki 2006), and storyworld possible selves theory (Author, 2014, 2018). My aim is to find out which selves, or “imagings self in storyworlds” 2014: 119) are likely be projected by readers, extent these interact with that characterizes naratives. The ...

In no possible world does a time traveler succeed in killing her earlier self before she ever enters a time machine. So if many, many time travelers went back in time trying to kill their unprotected former selves, the time travelers would fail in many strange, “coincidental” ways, slipping on banana peels, killing the wrong victim, and so on. Such cases produce doubts about time travel. How co...

This study explores the possible-self construction and achievement process in students of color from low-income communities by investigating these processes in 28 college students. Findings suggest that while parental encouragement of college aspirations may affect age at which the college student possible self is constructed and expectancy level, development of schematic possible selves is mor...

Who do we see when envisioning our "past self" and "future self"? Extant research finds a motivation to perceive improvement over time, such that past selves are seen as worse versions, and future selves as better versions, of current selves. However, the broader components comprising "worse" or "better" beyond domain-specific achievement (e.g., "Last year I failed at dieting, but next year I'l...

In this study, we explored the relation between romantic involvement status, actual/ideal self-discrepancy, and psychological well-being. We hypothesized that romantically involved individuals would report being closer to their ideal selves than would romantically uninvolved individuals. We also hypothesized that the reduced self-discrepancy reported by romantically involved individuals would b...