Give Up or Get Going? Productive Uncertainty in Uncertain Times

Uncertainty salience reduces the accessibility of episodic future thoughts

We live in uncertain times and how this pervasive sense of uncertainty affects our ability to think about the future remains largely unexplored. This study aims to investigate the effects of uncertainty salience on episodic future thinking-the ability to mentally represent specific future events. Experiment 1 assessed the impact of uncertainty on the accessibility of episodic future thoughts using an event fluency task. Participants were randomly assigned to either an uncertainty induction or control condition, and then were asked to imagine as many future events as possible that could happen in different time periods. The results showed that participants in the uncertainty condition produced fewer events, suggesting that uncertainty salience reduced the accessibility of episodic future thoughts. Experiment 2 investigated in further detail the mechanisms of production of episodic future thoughts that are affected by uncertainty. The results showed that uncertainty primarily reduced the accessibility of previously formed future thoughts (i.e., memories of the future) rather than affecting the ability to generatively think about the future and construct events. These findings shed new light on the impact of uncertainty on episodic future thinking, paving the way to further investigation into its implications for decision-making and future-oriented behavior.

The MAPS model of self-regulation: Integrating metacognition, agency, and possible selves

Self-regulation, a social-cognitive process at the intersection of metacognition, motivation, and behavior, encompasses how people conceptualize, strive for, and accomplish their goals. Self-regulation is critical for behavioral change regardless of the context. Research indicates that self-regulation is learned. Integral to successful self-regulation of behavior are: (a) an articulated concept of one's possible selves, (b) metacognitive knowledge and effective strategies, and (c) a sense of one's own agency. We present the theoretical linkages, research evidence, and applied utility for these three components in promoting self-regulation of behavior, specifically in the domain of learning. We propose the MAPS model to account for the pathways of influence that lead to behavioral change. This model illustrates the dynamic and feed-forward processes that derive from the interactions among possible selves, metacognition, and agency to provide the context for developing self-regulated and effective learning that promotes student success, the transfer of knowledge, and the foundation for life-long learning.

Implications of intersecting socioeconomic and racial-ethnic identities for academic achievement and well-being

The evolving study of identity development has become increasingly attentive to the ways that young people think about their socioeconomic and racial-ethnic identities. The status-based identity framework provides one way to analyze the implications of these dynamic identities, particularly as people approach young adulthood. For students from low socioeconomic status (SES) backgrounds, the experience of socioeconomic mobility can accompany an aversive sense of uncertainty about their own SES, termed status uncertainty, with potential negative implications for their academic behaviors and outcomes. A longitudinal study and experiment demonstrate some of these consequences and suggest how intersections between socioeconomic and racial-ethnic identities may be associated with well-being. This perspective on the dynamic identities of young people calls for consistent attention to the various levels of context that can be leveraged to support positive development, effective goal pursuit, and desired life trajectories.

Life in the Balance: Are Women’s Possible Selves Constrained by Men’s Domestic Involvement?

Do young women’s expectations about potential romantic partners’ likelihood of adopting caregiving roles in the future contribute to whether they imagine themselves in nontraditional future roles? Meta-analyzed effect sizes of five experiments (total N = 645) supported this complementarity hypothesis. Women who were primed with family-focused (vs. career-focused) male exemplars (Preliminary Study) or information that men are rapidly (vs. slowly) assuming greater caregiving responsibilities (Studies 1-4) were more likely to envision becoming the primary economic provider and less likely to envision becoming the primary caregiver of their future families. A meta-analysis across studies revealed that gender role complementarity has a small-to-medium effect on both women’s abstract expectations of becoming the primary economic provider ( d = .27) and the primary caregiver ( d = −.26). These patterns suggest that women’s stereotypes about men’s stagnant or changing gender roles might subtly constrain women’s own expected work and family roles.

Self-Uncertainty and the Influence of Alternative Goals on Self-Regulation

The current research examines factors that facilitate or undermine goal pursuit. Past research indicates that attempts to reduce self-uncertainty can result in increased goal motivation. We explore a critical boundary condition of this effect-the presence of alternative goals. Though self-regulatory processes usually keep interest in alternative goals in check, uncertainty reduction may undermine these self-regulatory efforts by (a) reducing conflict monitoring and (b) increasing valuation of alternative goals. As such, reminders of alternative goals will draw effort away from focal goals for self-uncertain (but not self-certain) participants. Across four studies and eight supplemental studies, using different focal goals (e.g., academic achievement, healthy eating) and alternative goals (e.g., social/emotional goals, attractiveness, indulgence), we found that alternative goal salience does not negatively influence goal-directed behavior among participants primed with self-certainty, but that reminders of alternative goals undermine goal pursuit among participants primed with self-uncertainty.

Social class and identity-based motivation

Attainments often fall short of aspirations to lead lives of meaning, health, happiness and success. Identity-based motivation theory highlights how social class and cultural contexts affect likelihood of shortfalls: Identities influence the strategies people are willing to use to attain their goals and the meaning people make of experienced ease and difficulty. Though sensitive to experienced ease and difficulty, people are not sensitive to the sources of these experiences. Instead, people make culturally-tuned inferences about what their experiences imply for who they are and could become and what to do about it. American culture highlights personal and shadows structural causes of ease and difficulty, success and failure. As a result, people infer that class-based outcomes are deserved reflections of character.

Upward social mobility and identity

As psychological research on socioeconomic status (SES) continues to expand, greater attention should be devoted to the influence of social mobility and the dynamic and malleable aspects of SES on people's lives. Status-based identity describes how people's socioeconomic circumstances relate to their broader sense of self and the meaning that they make of their own SES. Such an approach allows for complex study of the challenges and consequences of a change in SES. Research related to status-based identity suggests that although social mobility is often considered a signifier of reduced inequality, upward social mobility may also exacerbate other forms of inequality by instigating a destabilizing sense of status uncertainty that impairs motivation and well-being for class migrants.

Career Identity and Life Satisfaction

Identity formation is considered as a key factor in the conceptualization of life satisfaction (LS). Recent volatility in labor markets has negatively influenced college students’ LS and attending to the relationship between their career identity (CI) and LS has become important for career researchers and counselors. The purpose of this study is to examine the mediating effects of tolerance for uncertainty (TU) and emotions (positive affect [PA] and negative affect [NA]) in the relationship between CI development and LS. The hypotheses were tested among 199 college students in a prestigious South Korean university. The results indicate that TU and emotions mediate the effects of CI on LS. Based on these findings, career counselors are encouraged to help college students understand the synergy of TU and development of CI, which may increase their sense of LS.