Motivational and Behavioral Impact of Possible Selves: When Specificity Matters

Two experiments examined the effects of general and specific possible selves on undergraduates’ academic self-efficacy and engagement. Based on findings in the field of autobiographical memory, we assumed that an interaction pattern would appear between specificity and valence when imagining future self-relevant events. Indeed, visualizing a future general success or specific failure led to better performance on an attention task (Study 1) and higher academic motivation (Study 2) than imagining a future general failure or specific success. On a measure of self-efficacy, however, participants imagining a future general failure were the only ones reporting lower academic self-efficacy (Study 2), excluding the possibility that this variable could be sufficient to explain the effects of possible selves on academic engagement. These results support the assumption of a similar impact of autobiographical memories and possible selves on motivation and behavior and call for further research in this field.