Introduction
Hazel Rose Markus’ 1986 paper “Possible Selves” redefined how psychologists think of the relationship between self and culture. In that paper she and coauthor Paula Nurius developed the concept of possible selves: the ideal self we would like to become, we could become, and we are afraid of becoming.1 “A person’s identity involves more than the thoughts, feelings and behaviors of the current self; it also includes reflections of what a person was like in the past and hopes and fears about what a person may become in the future.”2 Each individual has a repertoire of possible selves that serve as the “cognitive manifestation of enduring goals, aspirations, motives, fears, and threats [which] provide ...
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