Mental Contrasting and Transfer of Energization

Research output: Journal contributionsJournal articlesResearchpeer-review

Authors

Mental contrasting a desired future with present reality is a self-regulation strategy that fosters energization in line with a person's expectations of successfully attaining the desired future. We investigated whether physiological energization (measured by systolic blood pressure) elicited by mental contrasting a desired future of solving a given task transfers to effort in an unrelated task. As predicted, mental contrasting a desired future of excelling in an intelligence test (Study 1) and of writing an excellent essay (Study 2) triggered changes in energization that translated into physical effort in squeezing a handgrip (Study 1) and translated into mental effort in writing a get-well letter (Study 2). Results suggest that mental contrasting of solving one task triggers energization that may fuel effort for performing an unrelated task. Implications for intervention research are discussed.

Original languageEnglish
JournalPersonality and Social Psychology Bulletin
Volume40
Issue number2
Pages (from-to)139-152
Number of pages14
ISSN0146-1672
DOIs
Publication statusPublished - 01.02.2014
Externally publishedYes

    Research areas

  • effort, energization, expectations, mental contrasting, performance
  • Psychology

DOI

Recently viewed

Researchers

  1. Alexander Kujath

Publications

  1. Networks of Clusters
  2. Young, Committed, Flexible and Female
  3. Methoden-Muster: Partizipation und Verhandlung
  4. Linking stakeholder survey, scenario analysis, and simulation modeling to explore the long-term impacts of regional water governance regimes
  5. Digital game culture(s) as prototype(s) of mediatization and commercialization of society
  6. Blättern, wenden, wiegen, zahlen
  7. Aarhus University, Aarhus, Denmark
  8. Effects of anthropogenic disturbances on soil microbial communities in oak forests persist for more than 100 years
  9. Notting Hill Gate 4 Basic
  10. Deliberative attention management
  11. Through the eye of a butterfly
  12. Abiotic and biotic drivers of tree trait effects on soil microbial biomass and soil carbon concentration
  13. Design und Methode der Studie
  14. Why reinvent the wheel
  15. Process limits of extrusion of multimaterial components
  16. Identification of multi-fault in rotor-bearing system using spectral kurtosis and EEMD
  17. Information rigidities, inflation perceptions, and the media
  18. The impact of weather variability and climate change on pesticide applications in the US - An empirical investigation
  19. Socioeconomic status and word problem solving in PISA: The role of mathematical content areas
  20. Die Macht der Funktionen
  21. Benchmarking question answering systems
  22. Crowdsourcing Swiss Dialect Transcriptions for Assessing Factors in Writing Variations
  23. Why can't we view Europe from a chair?
  24. Characterization of selected microalgae and cyanobacteria as sources of compounds with antioxidant capacity
  25. INSA Indicator System Sustainable Agriculture
  26. Simulationen im Nawi-Unterricht
  27. Does fragmentation contribute to the forest crisis in Germany?