Question 1

How is positive thinking detrimental to maintaining motivation?

Gabriele Oettingen · Accepted Answer

If you conceive of positive thinking in terms of positive daydreams and fantasies about the future, it can be problematic to maintaining motivation. The mental experience of having fulfilled your wishes and dreams makes you feel accomplished, and people relax. No wonder then that energy and effort decrease.

Question 2

Question 3

You found that blind optimism doesn't motivate people. Is defensive pessimism a good cognitive strategy for achieving goals?

Gabriele Oettingen · Accepted Answer

Defensive pessimism is a concept by Norem and Cantor, who observed students doing really well in their academic lives. Some of them strategically lowered their expectations for success in upcoming tasks. This elicited negative thoughts that they might fail. It is these negative thoughts that motivated them to put in the necessary work.

Defensive pessimism relates only to those who are high achievers. But it beautifully demonstrates that positive fantasies and daydreams about the future are not necessarily helpful to perform well. In any case, they are not enough to provide the impetus to perform well.

A fun sketch discussing some of our work is  here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pZYMYBaePKM&feature=emb_logo

Or follow this link to the woopmylife.org website https://woopmylife.org/en/science

Question 4

Are there any benefits to positive thinking? Are there situations where it does help people achieve their goals?

Gabriele Oettingen · Accepted Answer

There are many benefits of positive thinking. Having positive thoughts and daydreams allows you to explore the possibilities of your future. You can heighten your momentary mood, and it is the starting point for goal achievement. But positive thoughts and daydreams are not enough to realize a desired future. That is the problem. It gives action a direction, but at the same time, it saps the energy.

Positive thinking in terms of expectations of success is very different to positive fantasies and daydreams. While positive expectations, which are judgments on how likely it is that positive events will happen and negative events will not, are based on past experiences, positive fantasies are based on momentary needs.

Question 5

Who are the people who have high levels of self-regulation? How did they get this way?

Gabriele Oettingen · Accepted Answer

That's a good question. Only a few of us spontaneously use the self-regulatory strategy of mental contrasting during our daily lives, most of us indulge in positive fantasies of having already achieved what we want. Research suggests that anywhere between 10% to 25% of people spontaneously use the strategy, depending on the study. We know that those who are more achievement-oriented and face an immediate task use it somewhat more, but not substantially more, which is why we need to learn how to use the strategy to help ourselves.

Question 6

What are the most common internal barriers to achieving goals?

Gabriele Oettingen · Accepted Answer

That depends on the person, the context and the interaction between the person and the context. What we see as internal obstacles are often emotions, irrational beliefs, and ingrained habits.

Question 7

What advice would you give for overcoming procrastination?

Gabriele Oettingen · Accepted Answer

Use WOOP (Wish - Outcome - Obstacle – Plan). In our 20 years of research in motivation science we have discovered a straightforward cognitive strategy to overcome procrastination: WOOP. In the scientific literature, WOOP is known as mental contrasting with implementation intentions (MCII). It is the combination of mental contrasting (WOO) and implementation intentions or if-then plans (P). If-then plans have been the result of research by Peter M. Gollwitzer.

Learn about the science behind WOOP here: https://woopmylife.org/en/science

Learn about the practice of WOOP and download the WOOP Kit here: https://woopmylife.org/en/practice

Question 8

Is your work good news for realists and pessimists?

Gabriele Oettingen · Accepted Answer

Our work is good news for everyone. To find out how it can benefit you visit the WOOP website https://woopmylife.org/en/home

Question 9

How is motivation created?

Gabriele Oettingen · Accepted Answer

The answer to this question depends on the definition of motivation you use. If you define motivation as direction to act multiplied by the energy to act then you can predict that motivation is high if people have high expectations of success, have high incentive value, and at the same time have a strong need to reach or consume the incentive.

Question 10

If Mental Contrasting with Implementation Intentions is naturally used by those with good self-regulation, isn't that because they are already likely to have good motivation?

Gabriele Oettingen · Accepted Answer

People who self-report good self-regulation indeed use more mental contrasting. However, they by far do not use mental contrasting in all the situations they could benefit from.

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