University of Liège, Liège, Belgium.
Memory. 2024 Jul;32(6):678-693. doi: 10.1080/09658211.2023.2269324. Epub 2023 Oct 12.
While the role of autobiographical memory in self-representation is well established, the identity function of future thinking has received much less attention. Yet, most people commonly imagine future events that convey meaningful information about the person they wish or expect to become. In three experiments, we assessed the extent to which thinking about such self-defining future events influences the current content of self-representation (i.e., the working self-concept). Participants were asked to think about either a past or future self-defining event, or a control topic, before describing aspects of their identity in the form of "I am" statements (Experiments 1 and 3) or completing scales assessing self-related dimensions (Experiments 2 and 3). We found that thinking about a future self-defining event led participants to conceptualise themselves more in terms of their psychological traits, as did thinking about a past self-defining event. Furthermore, thinking about a future self-defining event increased the sense of present-future self-continuity, whereas thinking about a past self-defining event increased the sense of past-present self-continuity. These results suggest that self-representations are fuelled not only by autobiographical memories, but also by projections into the future.
虽然自传体记忆在自我表现中的作用已得到充分证实，但未来思维的身份功能却受到了较少关注。然而，大多数人通常会想象未来的事件，这些事件传达了有关他们希望或期望成为的人的有意义的信息。在三个实验中，我们评估了思考此类自我定义的未来事件对当前自我表现内容（即工作自我概念）的影响程度。参与者被要求思考过去或未来的自我定义事件，或控制主题，然后以“我是”陈述的形式描述自己的身份方面（实验 1 和 3），或完成评估自我相关维度的量表（实验 2 和 3）。我们发现，思考未来的自我定义事件会促使参与者更多地从心理特征方面来理解自己，思考过去的自我定义事件也是如此。此外，思考未来的自我定义事件会增加现在-未来自我连续性的感觉，而思考过去的自我定义事件会增加过去-现在自我连续性的感觉。这些结果表明，自我表现不仅受到自传体记忆的推动，还受到对未来的投射的推动。
