Adults ask children what they want to be when they grow up, hoping that this will motivate children to focus on their schoolwork- this does not necessarily happen. Identity-based motivation theory predicts that one way to increase the odds is for children to experience their adult future self as connected to their current self. Five studies test this prediction (N=641). We find that children can be guided to experience connection between their current and adult future self. Children guided to experience high connection work more and attain better school grades than children guided to experience low connection. Experienced connection works by moderating the effect of seeing school as the path to one’s adult future self.
Does experiencing difficulty bolster or undermine future self-images, strategies to get there and actual performance? We build on four insights from prior research to predict that accessible interpretation-of-experienced-difficulty mindset shapes identity and performance. First, people have two different interpretation-of-experienced-difficulty mindsets available in memory; their difficulty-as-impossibility mindset focuses attention on difficulty as implying low odds and their difficulty-as-importance mindset focuses attention on difficulty as implying high value. Second, people are sensitive to contextual cues as to which mindset to apply to understand their experienced difficulty. Third, people apply the mindset that comes to mind unless they have reason to question why it is “on-the-mind.” Fourth, social class can be thought of as a chronic context influencing how much people endorse each interpretation-of-experienced-difficulty mindset. We used subtle primes to guide participants’ attention toward either a difficulty-asimportance or a difficulty-as-impossibility mindset (N = 591). Participants guided toward a difficulty-as-importance mindset performed better on difficult academic tasks (Studies 1, 2) than participants guided toward a difficulty-as-impossibility mindset; whether they had more school-focused possible identities and linked strategies depended on sample (Studies 3, 4). For college students, the effect of guided interpretation-ofexperienced-difficulty mindset was not moderated by how much participants agreed with that mindset (Studies 1, 3, 4). College students mostly disagreed with a difficulty-as-impossibility mindset, but making that mindset accessible undermined their performance and sometimes their possible identities anyway. In contrast, middle school students (a younger and lower social class sample) were more likely to agree with a difficulty-as-impossibility mindset. In this sample (Study 2), we found an effect of mindset endorsement: agreeing that difficulty implies importance and disagreeing that difficulty implies impossibility improved performance.
Self-concept is one's theory about oneself, the person one was in the past, is now, and can become in the future, including social roles and group memberships. A well-functioning self-concept helps make sense of one's present, preserves positive self-feelings, makes predictions about the future, and guides motivation. The contents of the future-oriented component of self-concept have been termed possible selves (Markus & Nurius, 1986). Possible selves are the selves one believes one might become in the near and the more distal future and are therefore important in goal setting and motivation (for a review, see Oyserman & James, in press). Possible selves are valenced; that is, each individual has both positive images of the selves he or she desires and expects to become and negative images of the selves he or she wishes to avoid becoming.
Students value school success but often experience classroom norms implying that learning is easy and succeeding in school is not difficult. These succeed-with-ease-not-effort norms can undermine students’ grades and increase their risk of course failure in three ways. They can reduce the likelihood that students experience school as relevant to their future goals, experience right now as the time to get going, and difficulties as signals of schoolwork's importance, not its impossibility. To support student academic outcomes, we examine Pathways-to-Success, a classroom-level intervention operationalizing Identity-based Motivation theory in a 3-cycle, 3-year development design (N=1,142 8th-graders, 87% from low-income families as defined by free/reduced-price lunch, 64% Latinx, 20% African American). We document that Pathways-to-Success can be sustainable; our middle school teachers implemented and taught other teachers to implement Pathways-to-Success. We use structural equation models to show that effects are due to the theorized process; teachers who implemented with more signal clarity supported academic success by bolstering their students' identity-based motivation. We operationalized signal clarity as a mean of five fidelity components (dosage, adherence, quality, responsiveness, receipt). Signal clarity matters; students experiencing Pathways-to-Success with a clearer signal have a higher identity-based motivation score. Higher identity-based motivation yields better school outcomes.
People believe that they know who they are and that who they are matters for what they do. These core beliefs seem so inherent to conceptualizations of what it means to have a self as to require no empirical support. After all, what is the point of a concept of self if there is no stable thing to have a concept about, and who would care if that concept was stable if it was not useful in making it through the day? Yet the evidence for action-relevance and stability are surprisingly sparse. This entry outlines identity-based motivation theory which takes a new look at these assumptions and makes three core predictions termed dynamic construction, action-readiness, and interpretation of difficulty. That is, rather than being stable, which identities come to mind and what they mean are dynamically constructed in context. People interpret situations and difficulties in ways that are congruent with currently active identities and prefer identity-congruent to identity-incongruent actions. When action feels identity-congruent, experienced difficulty highlights that the behavior is important and meaningful. When action feels identity-incongruent, the same difficulty suggests that the behavior is pointless and “not for people like me.”