Apt and actionable possible identities matter: The case of academic outcomes.

INTRODUCTION: We review the longitudinal evidence documenting that middle and high school students with school-focused possible future identities subsequently attain better school outcomes. Consistent results across operationalizations of possible identities and academic outcomes imply that results are robust. However, variability in study designs means that the existing literature cannot explain the process from possible identity to academic outcomes. We draw on identity-based motivation theory to address this gap. We predict that imagining a possible school-focused future drives school engagement to the extent that students repeatedly experience their school-focused future identities as apt (relevant) and actionable (linked to strategies they can use now). METHODS: We operationalize aptness as having pairs of positive and negative school-focused possible identities (balance) and actionability as having a roadmap of concrete, linked strategies for school-focused possible selves (plausibility). We use machine learning to capture features of possible identities that predict academic outcomes and network analyses to examine these features (training sample USA 47% female, Mage = 14, N1 = 602, N2 = 540. Test sample USA 55% female, Mage = 13, N = 247). RESULTS: We report regression analyses showing that balance, plausibility, and our machine algorithm predict better end-of-school-year grades (grade point average). We use network analysis to show that our machine algorithm is associated with structural features of possible identities and balance and plausibility scores. CONCLUSIONS: Our results support the inference that student academic outcomes are improved when students experience their school-focused possible identities as apt and actionable.

Switching: Cultural fluency sustains and cultural disfluency disrupts thinking fast.

Culture-as-situated cognition theory provides insight into the system 1 monitoring algorithm. Culture provides people with an organizing framework, facilitating predictions, focusing attention, and providing experiential signals of certainty and uncertainty as system 1 inputs. When culture-based signals convey that something is amiss, system 2 reasoning is triggered and engaged when resources allow; otherwise, system 1 reasoning dominates.

Culturally fluent real-world disparities can blind us to bias: Experiments using a cultural lens can help.

Culture provides people with rich, detailed, implicit, and explicit knowledge about associations (what goes together) and contingencies (how situations are likely to unfold). These culture-based expectations allow people to get through their days without much systematic reasoning. Experimental designs that unpack these situated effects of culture on thinking, feeling, and doing can advance bias research and direct policy and intervention.

Cultural mindsets shape what grounded procedures mean: Cleansing can separate or connect and separating can feel good or not so good.

Are grounded procedures such as cleansing value-neutral main effects? Culture-as-situated-cognition theory suggests otherwise. Societies differ in how frequently they trigger membership and individualizing cultural mindsets and their linked mental-procedures - connecting and separating, respectively. Commonly triggered mindsets (and their linked mental-procedures) feel fluent. Fluency feels good. Cleansing can separate from but also connect to others in the form of membership-based rituals.

Do you need a roadmap or can someone give you directions: When school-focused possible identities change so do academic trajectories.

INTRODUCTION: Despite the assumed importance of school-focused possible identities for academic motivation and outcomes, interventions rarely assess the effect of intervention on possible identities. This may be due to difficulty coding open-ended text at scale but leaves open a number of questions: 1) how do school-focused possible identities change over the course of the school year, 2) whether these changes are associated with changes in school outcomes, and 3) whether a machine coding approach is viable. METHODS: In Study 1 (n = 247 Chicago 8th-graders) we assess fall-to-spring change in school-focused possible identities. We test whether change in school-focused possible identities predicts 8th-grade academic outcomes. We include robustness checks. Then we examine school context effects. In Study 2 (n = 1006 Chicago 8th-graders) we address the problem of coding at scale, using a separate data set to train a machine-learning algorithm. RESULTS: On average, school-focused possible identities decline over the school year. But nearly a third of students have increasing school-focused possible identity scores. Increase is associated with improved grades. School context influences whether linked strategies matter. Our machine-learning algorithm accurately classifies school-focused possible identities in our original sample and this school-focused classification reliably predicts academic trajectories. CONCLUSIONS: Change in school-focused possible identities is normative over the course of the school year, interventions should take this into account. On average, students have fewer school-focused possible identities by spring. This decline is associated with declining academic trajectories. However, when school-focused possible identities increase, so do grades. Whether strategies matter is context dependent.

Identity-based motivation and the paradox of the future self: Getting going requires thinking about time (later) in time (now).

People can imagine their future selves without taking future-focused action. Identity-based motivation theory explains why. Hoerl & McCormack outline how. Present-focused action prevails because future "me" feels irrelevant to the choices facing current "me" unless future "me" is experienced as occurring now or as linked to current "me" via if-then simulations. This entails reasoning in time and about time.

Culture Three Ways: Culture and Subcultures Within Countries.

Culture can be thought of as a set of everyday practices and a core theme-individualism, collectivism, or honor-as well as the capacity to understand each of these themes. In one's own culture, it is easy to fail to see that a cultural lens exists and instead to think that there is no lens at all, only reality. Hence, studying culture requires stepping out of it. There are two main methods to do so: The first involves using between-group comparisons to highlight differences and the second involves using experimental methods to test the consequences of disruption to implicit cultural frames. These methods highlight three ways that culture organizes experience: (a) It shields reflexive processing by making everyday life feel predictable, (b) it scaffolds which cognitive procedure (connect, separate, or order) will be the default in ambiguous situations, and (c) it facilitates situation-specific accessibility of alternate cognitive procedures. Modern societal social-demographic trends reduce predictability and increase collectivism and honor-based go-to cognitive procedures.

When does the future begin? Time metrics matter, connecting present and future selves.

People assume they should attend to the present; their future self can handle the future. This seemingly plausible rule of thumb can lead people astray, in part because some future events require current action. In order for the future to energize and motivate current action, it must feel imminent. To create this sense of imminence, we manipulated time metric--the units (e.g., days, years) in which time is considered. People interpret accessible time metrics in two ways: If preparation for the future is under way (Studies 1 and 2), people interpret metrics as implying when a future event will occur. If preparation is not under way (Studies 3-5), they interpret metrics as implying when preparation should start (e.g., planning to start saving 4 times sooner for a retirement in 10,950 days instead of 30 years). Time metrics mattered not because they changed how distal or important future events felt (Study 6), but because they changed how connected and congruent their current and future selves felt (Study 7).

Left behind or moving forward? Effects of possible selves and strategies to attain them among rural Chinese children.

Are possible selves and strategies to attain them universally helpful even among children with few resources? We test this question in rural China. Rural Chinese children are commonly "left behind" (LB) by parents seizing economic opportunities by migrating, hoping the family will "move forward" and their children will attain their predestined better future. Media, teachers, and peers negatively represent LB children as unruly and undisciplined, with negative fates, making LB a negative stereotype that includes the idea of destiny or fate. Indeed, making the idea of LB salient increases children's fatalism (Study 1 n = 144, Study 2 n = 124). However, having strategies to attain possible future selves predicts better in-class behavior, fewer depressive symptoms, and better exam performance even a year later and controlling for prior performance (Study 3 n = 176, Study 4 n = 145). Possible selves have mixed effects, not always predicting better grades and undermining LB children's self-control.

Will I get there? Effects of parental support on children's possible selves.

BACKGROUND: Imagining one's future self is a hallmark of adolescence. But imagining is not enough; adolescents must fell that this future is plausibly likely and take action, which may require pragmatic support. Prior research has examined the effect of parental aspirations and expectation on children's possible self, not the effect of their support. AIMS: Therefore, this study assessed the role of parental support on youths' possible selves, strategies, and subjective likelihood of attaining possible selves. SAMPLE: A representative sample of Hong Kong Chinese secondary students aged 12-20 (N = 3,078). METHODS: Students responded to an in-class questionnaire. Responses were analysed using generalized linear mixed models and linear mixed models. RESULTS: Content of hoped-for possible selves was mostly about school and career. Content of feared possible selves was more diverse. Girls had more school-and career-focused possible selves and were more likely to have strategies to attain their positive and avoid their negative possible selves. Students reporting more pragmatic support (if I need to know something about the world, I can ask my parent about it) from parents had more school-and career-focused possible selves and were more likely to believe they could attain their hope-for and avoid their feared possible selves and to report having at least one strategy to do so. CONCLUSIONS: Parental pragmatic support provides students a secure base to engage in their future generally and in their school-and career-focused future in particular.

Health Communication and Behavioral Change During the COVID-19 Pandemic.

The COVID-19 pandemic challenged the public health system to respond to an emerging, difficult-to-understand pathogen through demanding behaviors, including staying at home, masking for long periods, and vaccinating multiple times. We discuss key challenges of the pandemic health communication efforts deployed in the United States from 2020 to 2022 and identify research priorities. One priority is communicating about uncertainty in ways that prepare the public for disagreement and likely changes in recommendations as scientific understanding advances: How can changes in understanding and recommendations foster a sense that "science works as intended" rather than "the experts are clueless" and prevent creating a void to be filled by misinformation? A second priority concerns creating a culturally fluent framework for asking people to engage in difficult and novel actions: How can health messages foster the perception that difficulties of behavior change signal that the change is important rather than that the change "is not for people like me?" A third priority entails a shift from communication strategies that focus on knowledge and attitudes to interventions that focus on norms, policy, communication about policy, and channel factors that impair behavior change: How can we move beyond educating and correcting misinformation to achieving desired actions?

Who can I count on: Honor, self-reliance, and family in the United States and Iran.

Honor requires that individuals demonstrate their worth in the eyes of others. However, it is unclear how honor and its implications for behavior vary between societies. Here, we explore the tension between competing views about how to make sense of honor-as narrowly defined through self-reliance and self-defense or as broadly defined through strength of character. The former suggests that demonstrating the ability to defend one's self, is a crucial component of honor, while the latter allows the centrality of self-reliance to vary depending on circumstances. To examine these implications, we conducted studies in the U.S., where self-reliance is central to honor, and in Iran, where individual agency must be balanced against the interests of kin. Americans (Studies 1, 2a; n = 978) who endorsed honor values tended to ignore governmental COVID-19 measures because they preferred relying on themselves. In contrast, honor-minded Iranians (Study 2b; n = 201) adhered to public-health guidelines and did not prefer self-reliance. Moreover, honor-minded Iranians endorsed family-reliance, but did not moralize self-reliance (Study 3; n = 107), while honor-minded Americans endorsed family-reliance and moralized self-reliance (Study 3; n = 120). Results suggest that local norms may shape how honor is expressed across cultures.

One without the other: seeing relationships in everyday objects.

People often make multiple choices at the same time, choosing a snack and drink or a cell phone and case, only to learn that some of their choices are unavailable. Do they take the available item (or items) or something else entirely? Culture-as-situated-cognition theory predicts that this choice is determined by one's accessible cultural mind-set. An accessible collectivist (vs. individualist) mind-set should heighten sensitivity to an emergent relationship among items chosen together so that having some is not acceptable if not all can be obtained. Indeed, we found that Latinos (but not Anglos) refuse chosen items if not all can be obtained (Study 1a). Further, making a collectivist mind-set accessible reproduces this between-groups difference (Study 1b), increases people's willingness to pay to complete sets (Study 1b), and shifts choice to previously undesired items if no set-completing option is provided (Studies 2-4). Finally, we found that increased sensitivity to an emergent relationship among chosen items mediates these effects (Studies 3 and 4).

Difficulty-as-Improvement: The Courage to Keep Going in the Face of Life's Difficulties.

When a task or goal is hard to think about or do, people can infer that it is a waste of their time (difficulty-as-impossibility) or valuable to them (difficulty-as-importance). Separate from chosen tasks and goals, life can present unchosen difficulties. Building on identity-based motivation theory, people can see these as opportunities for self-betterment (difficulty-as-improvement). People use this language when they recall or communicate about difficulties (autobiographical memories, Study 1; "Common Crawl" corpus, Study 2). Our difficulty mindset measures are culture-general (Australia, Canada, China, India, Iran, New Zealand, Turkey, the United States, Studies 3-15, N = 3,532). People in Western, Educated, Industrialized, Rich, Democratic (WEIRD)-er countries slightly agree with difficulty-as-improvement. Religious, spiritual, conservative people, believers in karma and a just world, and people from less-WEIRD countries score higher. People who endorse difficulty-as-importance see themselves as conscientious, virtuous, and leading lives of purpose. So do endorsers of difficulty-as-improvement-who also see themselves as optimists (all scores lower for difficulty-as-impossibility endorsers).

Is Difficulty Mostly About Impossibility? What Difficulty Implies May Be Culturally Variant.

Difficulty can signal low odds (impossibility) and high value (importance). We build on culture-as-situated cognition theory's description of culture-based fluency and disfluency to predict that the culturally fluent meaning of difficulty is culture-bound. For Americans, the culturally fluent understanding of ability is success-with-ease-not-effort, hence difficulty implies low odds of ability. This may disadvantage American institutions and practices-learning requires gaining competence and proficiency through effortful engagement. Indeed, Americans (Studies 1, 3-8; N = 4,141; Study 2, the corpus of English language) associate difficulty with impossibility more than importance. This tendency is not universal. Indian and Chinese cultures imply that difficulty can equally signal low odds and value. Indeed, people from India and China (Studies 9-11, N = 762) are as likely to understand difficulty as being about both. Effects are culture-based; how much people endorse difficulty-as-importance and difficulty-as-impossibility in their own lives did not affect results.

Research on discrimination and health: an exploratory study of unresolved conceptual and measurement issues.

OBJECTIVES: Our goal in this study was to better understand racial and socioeconomic status (SES) variations in experiences of racial and nonracial discrimination. METHODS: We used 1999 and 2000 data from the YES Health Study, which involved a community sample of 50 Black and 50 White respondents drawn from 4 neighborhoods categorized according to racial group (majority Black or majority White) and SES (≤ 150% or > 250% of the poverty line). Qualitative and quantitative analyses examined experiences of discrimination across these neighborhoods. RESULTS: More than 90% of Blacks and Whites described the meaning of unfair treatment in terms of injustice and felt certain about the attribution of their experiences of discrimination. These experiences triggered similar emotional reactions (most frequently anger and frustration) and levels of stress across groups, and low-SES Blacks and Whites reported higher levels of discrimination than their moderate-SES counterparts. CONCLUSIONS: Experiences of discrimination were commonplace and linked to similar emotional responses and levels of stress among both Blacks and Whites of low and moderate SES. Effects were the same whether experiences were attributed to race or to other reasons.

Seeing meaning even when none may exist: Collectivism increases belief in empty claims.

People often find truth and meaning in claims that have no regard for truth or empirical evidence. We propose that one reason is that people value connecting and fitting in with others, motivating them to seek the common ground of communication and generate explanations for how claims might make sense. This increases the likelihood that people experience empty claims as truthful, meaningful, or even profound. Seven studies (N > 16,000 from the United States and China) support our prediction. People who score higher in collectivism (valuing connection and fitting in) are more likely to find fake news meaningful and believe in pseudoscience (Studies 1 to 3). China-U.S. cross-national comparisons show parallel effects. Relative to people from the United States, Chinese participants are more likely to see meaning in randomly generated vague claims (Study 4). People higher in collectivism are more likely to engage in meaning-making, generating explanations when faced with an empty claim, and having done so, are more likely to find meaning (Study 5). People who momentarily experience themselves as more collectivistic are more likely to see empty claims as meaningful (Study 6). People higher in collectivism are more likely to engage in meaning-making unless there is no common ground to seek (Study 7). We interpret our results as suggesting that conditions that trigger collectivism create fertile territory for the spread of empty claims, including fake news and misinformation. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2022 APA, all rights reserved).

Upright and Honorable: People Use Space to Understand Honor, Affecting Choice and Perception.

Honor is abstract. We predict that people make sense of honor metaphorically as an up-right position in space and that endorsing honor values makes this metaphor more accessible. Supporting our prediction, people in China (Study 1) and the United States (Studies 1-4) associate honor with up and right and dishonor with down and left, controlling for the association of positive with up-right (Studies 3, 4). We document downstream consequences for choice and perception of this metaphoric representation. Regarding choice, Americans who endorse honor values and voted for then-candidate Trump prefer photographs in which President Trump is positioned in the up-right quadrant (Study 5). Images from conservative news websites position the President's face in the up-right quadrant more than nonconservative ones (Study 6). Regarding perception, Americans who rate President Trump as honorable are more likely to perceive him as facing up and to the right in news website images (Study 7).

Identity-based motivation: Implications for intervention.

Children want to succeed academically and attend college, but their actual attainment often lags behind; some groups (e.g., boys, low-income children) are particularly likely to experience this gap. Social structural factors matter, influencing this gap in part by affecting children's perceptions of what is possible for them and people like them in the future. Interventions that focus on this macro-micro interface can boost children's attainment. We articulate the processes underlying these effects using an integrative culturally sensitive framework entitled identity-based motivation (IBM, Oyserman, 2007, 2009a, 2009b). The IBM model assumes that identities 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."

Left behind, not alone: feeling, function and neurophysiological markers of self-expansion among left-behind children and not left-behind peers.

Four in 10 young rural Chinese children are 'left behind' by parents migrating for economic opportunities. Left-behind children do as well academically and imagine as many possible futures for themselves as their peers, implying that they must compensate in some ways for loss of everyday contact with their parents. Three studies test and find support for the prediction that compensation entails self-expansion to include a caregiving grandmother rather than one's mother in self-concept, as is typical in Chinese culture. We measured self-expansion with feeling, function and neurophysiological variables. Twelve-year-old middle school left-behind children (Study 1, N = 66) and 20-year-old formerly left-behind children (now in college, Studies 2 and 3, N = 162) felt closer to their grandmothers and not as close to their mothers as their peers. Self-expansion had functional consequence (spontaneous depth-of-processing) and left a neurophysiological trace (event-related potential, Study 3). Left-behind participants had enhanced recall for information incidentally connected to grandmothers (Studies 1 and 3, not Study 2). Our results provide important insights into how left-behind children cope with the loss of parental presence: they include their grandmother in their sense of self. Future studies are needed to test downstream consequences for emotional and motivational resilience.