Mental Contrasting: Its Definition, Success Reasons, Mechanisms, and Studies About It (Part I)

Is it wise to spend enough time thinking about successful outcomes if success depends on it?

Imagination and positive thinking can help you achieve almost anything, but are there scientific studies that confirm this?

Indeed! There is a scientific study called Mental Contrasting, but its results are somewhat controversial.

In this article, we address the topics that apply and don't apply to Mental Contrasting, examine its pros and cons, address some related issues, and finally provide some studies about it.

What is Mental Contrasting?

It is an imagination-based technique developed by motivational psychology expert Gabriele Oettingen. Experiments have demonstrated that this technique can enhance the efficacy of conventional self-regulation strategies like positive future imagination, as it leads to:

• Improving academic performance, obtaining high exam grades, and devoting more time to standardized test preparation.
• Improving health, encouraging more exercise, reducing unhealthy snacking, and eating more fruit.
• Encouraging asking for help and promoting helping behavior.
• Increasing the possibility of taking steps to cut back on smoking.

Before delving any further into this technique, it is important to understand that its effect depends on success expectations. When a user expects success, their activity level and goal commitment increase. However, these factors decrease when a user expects a low success rate.

How Mental Contrasting Works?

The Mental Contrasting mechanism is very simple. You may even have practiced this technique before, but you know it as imagination. However, imagination and Mental Contrasting differ slightly and are not very similar.

Here’s How You Practice Mental Contrasting:

• Write or consider several advantages associated with achieving your goal. For example, suppose you are trying to lose weight. In that case, these advantages might include being more attractive, living longer, spending less on healthcare, feeling more energetic, staying active, and so on.
• Concentrate on the biggest features, the largest advantage you stand to gain, or several smaller advantages. Then, imagine these advantages. The longer you think about them and delve into the details, the better.
• Write or consider several obstacles that stand in your way of achieving your goal. For example, suppose you are trying to lose weight. In that case, these obstacles might include things like the urge to snack, purchasing unhealthy food when grocery shopping, overindulging in dinner, experiencing emotional gluttony, lacking the drive to exercise, and so on.
• Concentrate on the biggest obstacle or a few smaller obstacles. Then, imagine these obstacles; the longer you think about them and delve into the details, the better.

It's really that simple: visualize your goal and the obstacles you will encounter.

In most studies that tested Mental Contrasting, participants were asked to use this technique only once for a few minutes, and then changes in behavior were observed that lasted several weeks.

Mental Contrasting Is Not Suitable for Insecure People

In nearly every study that examined the Mental Contrasting impact, it harmed insecure individuals. Therefore, this technique should not be used to boost confidence. Mental contrast is a technique that can help you achieve more if you have self-confidence, but it can also work against you if you lack it. It works by converting your thoughts about success into concrete, motivating emotions.

For example, in one study, the performance of the low-expectation group that practiced Mental Contrasting was three times worse than the control group. So, do not use this technique if you are not confident of success. Sometimes, it may be logical to reduce commitment to unachievable goals to free up time and energy to achieve more manageable, ability-appropriate goals.

Why Was Mental Contrasting Developed?

When a book, website, or coach recommends imagination, they often refer to the part related to positive future imagination of Mental Contrasting. They suggest that you visualize achieving your goal, getting the final rewards, and approaching situations from your subconscious mind's perspective.

Positive future imagination succeeds when you keep your imagination grounded in reality. When you connect your imagination to reality, the brain will work with careful study and planning. It encourages you to succeed because, as they say, “If you can imagine it, you can achieve it.” Positive future imagination works because it persuades your mind that the future you envision is likely to come true—in other words, you can achieve your goals as long as you can imagine them.

The positive future imagination part works well for insecure people, but it fails with more confident ones. If you are confident but lack motivation, research indicates that positive future imagination's detrimental effects outweigh its benefits. This is because your mind assumes that achieving the goal is easier than it is in reality, and this is a problem because your subconscious mind is highly efficient, it only allocates the necessary amount of energy to achieve its goals, and anything more than that would be a waste of time.

Your mind will devote less energy to a goal if you think it will be easy to achieve. So, this reduces your commitment to the goals. Mental Contrasting was created to solve this issue, helping those who are confident but lack motivation.

Comparison between Mental Contrasting and Imagination

If you are confident in your ability to reach your goals, use Mental Contrasting to motivate yourself. If you are not as confident, use only the positive future imagination section (imagination), as this will help your subconscious believe that you are capable of succeeding.

Why Is Mental Contrasting Successful?

The subconscious mind acts on emotion, habit, and desire, and it has a short time horizon. Your subconscious mind wants you to be healthy, wealthy, and happy. However, the issue is that it doesn't understand and that's why it's difficult to find motivation for long-term goals, not because your subconscious mind is uninterested.

Although you know that running outside enhances the cardiovascular system and burns fat, your subconscious mind views this as a pointless energy waste. You understand that putting your effort into typing on the keyboard helps you produce good work, which leads to your promotion and allows you to earn more money, but your subconscious mind only sees that you are wasting your time repeatedly pressing the buttons.

Mental Contrast helps your subconscious mind understand by connecting the promise of future rewards with the challenges that must be overcome in the present. You - the conscious - understand, but your subconscious mind only understands by imagination, and that’s why your ideas about greatness and achievement fail to help it understand.

This theory has been reduced to specific physiological alterations in the brain. When Mental Contrasting is associated with high success expectations, the neural connection between the obstacle and the future reward increases, which means that climbing the stairs becomes more associated with health.

Fears and Questions About Mental Contrasting

This technique is associated with several fears and unanswered questions, such as:

• Why haven't more researchers confirmed the technique's efficacy?
• What is this technique's long-term impact?

So far, just a few studies have tested this technique's effectiveness for more than a few weeks.

• Who benefits and who gets harmed by this technique?

Undoubtedly, there are other factors at work here besides success expectations.

• How can low expectations be reliably and readily recognized if Mental Contrasting is so detrimental to those who have low success expectations?
• How many times should Mental Contrasting be practiced? For example, is 10 minutes of Mental Contrasting twice as effective as 5 minutes? Is once a day seven times more effective than once a week?

In Conclusion

This part of the article discusses the Mental Contrasting definition, its success reasons, mechanisms, and some fears and questions about it. The second and final part discusses 9 studies about Mental Contrasting.