Two experiments examined the effects of general and specific possible selves on undergraduates’ academic self-efficacy and engagement. Based on findings in the field of autobiographical memory, we assumed that an interaction pattern would appear between specificity and valence when imagining future self-relevant events. Indeed, visualizing a future general success or specific failure led to better performance on an attention task (Study 1) and higher academic motivation (Study 2) than imagining a future general failure or specific success. On a measure of self-efficacy, however, participants imagining a future general failure were the only ones reporting lower academic self-efficacy (Study 2), excluding the possibility that this variable could be sufficient to explain the effects of possible selves on academic engagement. These results support the assumption of a similar impact of autobiographical memories and possible selves on motivation and behavior and call for further research in this field.

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There is growing evidence in the literature of positive relationships between socio-emotional competencies and school performance. Several hypotheses have been used to explain how these variables may be related to school performance. In this paper, we explored the role of various school adjustment variables in the relationship between interpersonal socio-emotional competencies and school grades, using a weighted network approach. This network approach allowed us to analyze the structure of interrelations between each variable, pointing to both central and mediatory school and socio-emotional variables within the network. Self-reported data from around 3,400 French vocational high school students were examined. This data included a set of interpersonal socio-emotional competencies (cognitive and affective empathy, socio-emotional behaviors and collective orientation), school adjustment measures (adaptation to the institution, school anxiety, self-regulation at school, and self-perceived competence at school) as well as grades in mathematics and French language. The results showed that self-regulation at school weighted the most strongly on the whole network, and was the most important mediatory pathway. More specifically, self-regulation mediated the relationships between interpersonal socio-emotional competencies and school grades.

In the context of the COVID‐19 pandemic, governments are attempting to vaccinate a large proportion of their adult population against the virus. While many people hurried to receive the vaccine, vaccination rates then started stagnating and governments are searching for solutions to motivate remaining citizens to receive the vaccine. Previous studies show that imagining oneself in the future can motivate health prevention behaviors, but our study is the first to use a future selves paradigm to study vaccination motivators. In two mixed methods studies we examine the effects of imagining of a future‐vaccinated self (FVS) on vaccine attitudes, where participants were asked to think about what their life would be like once they had received the COVID‐19 vaccine. In Study 1 (n = 114), we coded the most important categories of FVS. Several FVS were identified and related to increased social and leisure activities, reduced negative emotion and societal constraints, possible side effects of the vaccine, and societal changes. In Study 2 (n = 113), we used a 2 × 2 design in which participants' reflections on their FVS were guided or open and visualized from a first‐ or third‐person perspective. The guided condition produced greater acceptance of the vaccine, and the first‐person perspective produced greater behavioral intentions to be vaccinated. We discuss the effectiveness of future selves interventions for promoting vaccination in different societal contexts.

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