Abstract
Most American children expect to attend college but because they do not necessarily spend much time on schoolwork, they may fail to reach their imagined " college-bound" future self. The proposed identity-based motivation model helps explain why this gap occurs: Imagined " college-bound" identities cue school-focused behavior if they are salient and feel relevant to current choice options, not otherwise. Two studies with predominantly low-income and African American middle school students support this prediction. Almost all of the students expect to attend college, but only half describe education-dependent (e.g., law, medicine) adult identities. Having education-dependent rather than education-independent adult identities (e.g., sports, entertainment) predicts better grades over time, controlling for prior grade point average (Study 1). To demonstrate causality, salience of education-dependent vs. education-independent adult identities was experimentally manipulated. Children who considered education-dependent adult identities (vs. education-independent ones) were eight times more likely to complete a take-home extra-credit assignment (Study 2).
| Original language | English (US) |
|---|---|
| Pages (from-to) | 846-849 |
| Number of pages | 4 |
| Journal | Journal of Experimental Social Psychology |
| Volume | 46 |
| Issue number | 5 |
| DOIs | |
| State | Published - Sep 2010 |
Funding
Funding for this study was provided by the Michigan Prevention Research Training Grant (NIH Grant number T32 MH63057 ), by an NIH grant to Daphna Oyserman (NIH Grant number R01 MH58299) and by an NSF Graduate Research Fellowship .
Keywords
- Academic achievement
- Future identity
- Motivation
- Possible selves
- Race
- Social cognition
- Socioeconomic status
ASJC Scopus subject areas
- Social Psychology
- Sociology and Political Science