SELF AND IDENTITY, 2017 https://doi.org/10.1080/15298868.2017.1375003 From future self to current action: An identity-based motivation perspective Cécile Nurra a and Daphna Oyserman b§ a Laboratoire de recherche des apprentissages en contexte, Université Grenoble Alpes, Grenoble, France; b Department of Psychology, University of Southern California, Los Angeles, CA, USA ABSTRACT 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 ind 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 efect of seeing school as the path to one’s adult future self. Tinker, tailor, soldier, sailor, rich man, poor man, beggar man, thief, doctor, lawyer, Indian chief. Or what about a cowboy, policeman, jailer, engine driver, or a pirate chief? … Oh it’s such a lot of things there are and such a lot to be … (Children’s counting song, Cherry Stones, A. A. Milne, 1927). Many well-meaning adults ask even quite young children what they want to be when they “grow up” and then admonish them to work hard and stay in school so they can attain their “grown up” or adult self. Indeed, most children, no matter their current school attainment, do aspire to succeed in school and go on to college (New, 2014; Oyserman, 2013). Adults might think that if children just bring their “grown up” adult future self to mind, this will remind children to more engaged with their schoolwork. However, children’s adult future self is far away. This distance matters, anything that is not immediate, right now, today, is less central to judgment (e.g., Chapman & Elstein, 1995). The here and now requires attention, what is later may not require action as yet – starting tomorrow should be just as good (Lewis & Oyserman, 2015; Oyserman & Lewis, 2017). But it is always now (today) and never tomorrow so there must be some way in which the future can be made to feel imminent, as if it is now, so that it requires current action. We predict that this occurs when children’s adult future selves feel connected with (linked to) rather than disconnected (decoupled) from their current selves (Oyserman, 2015). As outlined next, this prediction is built from a synthesis of identi- ty-based motivation theory and prior research on lay intuitions about time as distance. © 2017 Informa UK Limited, trading as Taylor & Francis Group KEYWORDS Future self; possible self; school engagement; connection; identity-based motivation ARTICLE HISTORY Received 2 November 2016 Accepted 29 August 2017 Published online 14 September 2017 CONTACT Daphna Oyserman oyserman@usc.edu § Department of Psychology, University of Southern California, Los Angeles, CA, USA