Effects of past and future autobiographical thinking on the working self-concept

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.