Excerpt from “59 seconds: Think a little, change a lot” by Richard Wiseman
In one study, conducted by Lien Pham and Shelley Taylor at the University of California, a group of students was asked to spend a few moments each day visualizing themselves getting a high grade on an important midterm exam that would take place in a few days’ time. 1 They were asked to form a clear image in their mind’s eye and imagine how great it would feel to make a high grade. The study also involved a control group of students, who went about their business as usual and were not asked to visualize doing especially well on the exams. The experimenters asked the students in both groups to make a note of the number of hours they studied each day, and monitored their final grades. Even though the daydreaming exercise lasted only a few minutes, it had a significant impact on the students’ behavior, causing them to study less and make lower grades on the exam. The exercise may have made them feel better about themselves, but it did not help them achieve their goals.
In another experiment, Gabriele Oettingen and Thomas Wadden, at the University of Pennsylvania, followed a group of obese women taking part in a weight-reduction program. 2 During the work, the women were asked to imagine how they might behave in various food-related scenarios, such as going to a friend’s house and being tempted with tasty pizza. Each of their responses was categorized on a scale ranging from highly positive (with, for example, someone stating, “I would be a good person and stay well away from the cakes and ice cream”) to highly negative (“I would be straight in there, consuming both my own and other people’s portions”). After the women were tracked for a year, the results revealed that those with more positive fantasies had lost, on average, twenty-six pounds less than those with negative fantasies.
The author recommends a “doublethink” approach instead, where you visualise both the positive outcomes and the negative ones, asking questions like what your plan of action would be on failure while simultaneously thinking about the benefits of success.
Nice post! Appreciate the detailed use of sources. Wouldn’t you say that if you delegate your affirmations / visions 50-50 to the positive and negative outcome, your negative outcome would be more likely to happen? In my mind, over a long enough time frame, if you keep visualizing your achievements and if you do not give up, they will end up happening. If you allow a negative outcome, however, it is more likely that you will forget about the achievement and pursue other things. Maybe sometimes that is good, but other times with that little bit of extra perseverance you are able to achieve what you wanted but were not able to the first time.
I understand that the research you shared confirmed the exact opposite of what I am saying but I am interested in your personal anecdotal experience surrounding this since mine has shown that only planning for the successful outcome tends to give me the most benefit. Even if I have to do it several times over the course of years, it eventually gets done.
I will look into these studies more, thank you for sharing!!
Thank you for sharing your insights. It’s good to hear a different perspective.
What I believe is that these studies tell you the general behaviour of people and need not necessarily apply to all of us.
If focusing on positive outcomes helps you, may be it’s because your baseline is to be on the opposite end by default in a way that being extremely positive helps you be balanced? Just a hypothesis.
Personally, I get anxious if I try to suppress negative thoughts and focus only on positives, instead I try to use the Buddhist technique of “The Glass Is Already Broken” which helps me be calm and disciplined.