Future selves and others: A lifespan and cross‐cultural perspective

Recent research in lifespan development has shown that young adults are able to make projections as to their anticipated status later in life. The current investigation invited undergraduates to assess themselves and peers now, and at the ages of 65 and 85 years of age. These ratings were taken together with ratings of the typical person at those latter ages across two communicative (viz., accommodation and nonaccommodation) and personality (viz., personal vitality and benevolence) dimensions. Given that varying conceptions of the self have been documented cross‐culturally, the study was conducted in both the USA and Japan. The results showed respondents projected that their language and personality make‐ups would change later in life and that the emerging patterns would be very different across the four dependent measures. As predicted, Japanese respondents showed less differentiation across the social targets rated than did their American counterparts. The social significance of these findings is discussed along with avenues for further research.