Mental contrasting and transfer of energization
Developmental and Educational Psychology
Final Report Abstract
This project involved four subprojects focusing on the self-regulation of energization. The first subproject investigated the transfer of energization to low-expectancy tasks through the self-regulation strategy of mentally contrasting a desired future with present reality. Mental contrasting can trigger expectancy-dependent energization for tasks essential to achieving the desired future. This energization effect can also transfer to tasks that are unrelated to the desired future at hand. In this project, we investigated whether this energization-transfer effect even transfers to a task for which people have low expectations. In Laboratory Experiment 1, participants who engaged in mental contrasting (vs. indulging) about performing well in a creativity task experienced physiological energization and performed better in an unrelated cognitive task (an intelligence test) with low success expectations. Field Experiment 2 focused on schoolchildren. By mentally contrasting an interpersonal wish, the children invested more effort and performed better in a subsequent low-expectancy academic task of finding typos in a text. Online Experiment 3 replicated the findings of Experiment 2 using adults instead of schoolchildren. Participants who engaged in mental contrasting regarding an interpersonal wish showed no differences in effort and performance between a subsequent low-expectancy academic task (finding typos) and a respective high-expectancy task. Overall, the pattern suggests that mental contrasting can reduce the typical drop in motivation and performance that occurs with low-expectancy tasks, making individuals equally energized and engaged regardless of whether they have high or low expectations. Overall, these experiments highlight the potential of mental contrasting as an intervention to foster energization and motivation for low-expectancy tasks. These findings have important implications for designing interventions aimed at promoting motivation and achievement in various domains. In the second subproject, we examined the relationship between regulatory focus (promotion vs. prevention) and participants' spontaneous thoughts about the future vs. the present reality. Promotion-oriented individuals seek to change and improve their current state using eagerness-related strategies, while prevention-oriented individuals focus on maintaining their current state using vigilance-related strategies. Study 1 manipulated regulatory focus by asking participants to generate concerns related to improving or maintaining their current state. Participants in the promotion condition wrote more about the desired future and viewed the future more positively than those in the prevention condition. Study 2 replicated these findings in the interpersonal domain, and Study 3 explored the effect of chronic regulatory focus on participants' thoughts about the future vs. the present reality and found an analogous pattern as Studies 2 and 3. Overall, these studies investigated the influence of regulatory focus on individuals' spontaneous thoughts about the future vs. reality utilizing writing tasks and content analysis of participants' written texts. The third subproject involved one study that was part of a multilab project to replicate the effect of energy depletion. The study manipulated energy depletion using the Stroop task and measured subsequent self-control using an anti-saccade task. The mulitlab project involved studies from twelve labs and found evidence for a small depletion effect. In the fourth subproject, we investigated whether energy effects of mental contrasting can be adjusted to people’s respective contexts. We analyzed this question regarding the energization of a wishful future in the domain of sports. A field study with marathon runners showed that mental contrast supports runners exactly then, when it becomes particularly difficult to endure running, that is, in the last part of the marathon race. Our results demonstrated that mental contrasting leads to an improved balance between evidenced and demanded effort which can be measured by participants’ flow experience. Mental contrasting also led to an improved performance and flow, especially in the most difficult part of the race. Apparently, mental contrasting helps to adjust one’s energy and effort to a particularly challenging context, and this result applies to in the lab and in the field.
Publications
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Teaching mental contrasting to facilitate educational attainment across sociocultural contexts. In Liem, G. A. D. & McInerney, D. M. (Eds.), Educational interventions: a sociocultural perspective. 13th volume of research on sociocultural influences on motivation and learning. Information Age Publishing.
Sevincer, A. T. & Oettingen, G.
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Regulatory focus and thinking about the future versus reality.. Motivation Science, 7(3), 334-344.
Sevincer, A. Timur & Oettingen, Gabriele
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Mental contrasting and energization transfer to low-expectancy tasks. Motivation and Emotion, 47(1), 85-99.
Sevincer, A. Timur; Plakides, Alexander & Oettingen, Gabriele
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Getting hold of ego-depletion: Multilab-replication study finds small effect. Paper presented at the 19. General Meeting of the European Association of Social Psychology, Cracow, Poland.
Sevincer, A. T., Dang, J., Barker, P., Baumert, A. Berkman, E. Buchholz, N. … & Zinkernagel
