Self-Portraits: Possible Selves in European-American, Chilean, Japanese and Japanese-American Cultural Contexts

Possible selves of students from European-American (EA), Chilean (CH), Japanese-American (JA), and Japanese (JN) cultural contexts were analyzed, revealing differences in the emphasis given to various content themes. EA possible selves focus on intrapersonal themes (i.e., “fear being dependent”), consistent with cultural emphases on uniqueness and independent development. In JN, JA and CH contexts, career and education themes dominate possible selves, consistent with particularly strong cultural emphasis on professional and academic accomplishments. The cultural contexts also differ in their predominant configurations of possible selves—EA and CH possible selves often show balance (expected and feared selves of similar theme but opposing valence, i.e., “expect to graduate from college” and “fear dropping out of college”) while JN and JA selves more frequently match (expected and feared selves of similar thematic content and valence, i.e., “expect to be idle” and “fear being idle”).