Mental contrasting and transfer of energization

• Applicant: Professorin Dr. Gabriele Oettingen, since 1/2022
• Subject Area: General, Cognitive and Mathematical Psychology ; Developmental and Educational Psychology
• Term: from 2018 to 2023
• Project identifier: Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft (DFG) - Project number 406078936

Mentally contrasting a desired future with present reality is a self-regulation strategy that elicits energization depending on high vs. low expectations of success (Oettingen et al., 2009). The elicited energization fuels effort toward fulfilling the desired future and even transfers to effort for tasks that are unrelated to the desired future targeted by mental contrasting (Sevincer, Busatta, & Oettingen, 2014). In the present project, we examine how the transfer of energization can be applied depending on the demands of a situation to foster energization for unrelated tasks. Specifically, we suspect that mental contrasting about an initial task instigates energization transfer to an unrelated task when people do not have the opportunity to perform their initial or a substitute task to attain their initial goal (Studies 1 and 2). Furthermore, we want to test these new possibilities of the use of mental contrasting in applied contexts. Specifically, we investigate in the field whether energization transfer by mental contrasting boosts performance for unrelated tasks irrespective of participants’ expectations for the unrelated tasks. That is, even when participants expectations for the unrelated tasks are low. In two intervention studies, we plan to examine whether school children who mentally contrast an important wish from the interpersonal domain (sports domain, respectively) for which they have high expectations elicits energization that then transfers to performance in learning vocabulary (studying math, respectively; Studies 3 and 4). The present project has theoretical implications for the concept of energization as an activation state that can be elicited by task-specific mental contrasting but can carry-over to fuel effort in unrelated tasks; it has applied implications for developing interventions to help people address tasks for which they initially have low expectations of success. Energizing people for tasks for which they initially have low expectations is a long-standing challenge in intervention research, in particular in academic contexts, for which the present project offers a new approach.

• DFG Programme: Research Grants
• Ehemaliger Antragsteller: Dr. A. Timur Sevincer, until 12/2021