Rethinking Positive Thinking by Gabriele Oettingen

Author:Gabriele Oettingen [Oettingen, Gabriele]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Penguin Group US
Published: 2014-10-01T04:00:00+00:00

Figure 8. The two chess tasks that all children were asked to solve.

In analyzing our results, we made sure to adjust statistically for children’s different skill levels at chess. We found that children who had performed mental contrasting were more likely to detect their own piece as an obstacle that prevented checkmate if they had initially thought winning the lottery tickets was feasible, and less likely if they had initially doubted their ability to win the lottery tickets. When it came to the non-obstacle tasks, students in the mental contrasting group performed about the same as those in the control group. Mental contrasting enhanced children’s ability to detect obstacles in their path when they were pursuing a viable wish, and it decreased their abilities to detect obstacles when the wish in question wasn’t viable. Children who performed mental contrasting were thus better equipped to pursue their goals and to handle the unanticipated obstacles that could crop up.

Focus on a wish you think you will probably achieve but that is challenging for you. Take a few minutes to perform mental contrasting with that wish. Now let a week or two pass. Sit down with a notebook and list all the additional obstacles that got in your way that you were able to perceive and overcome. How many were there? If your wish was to exercise more after work, and the obstacle you initially came up with was wanting to spend time relaxing in front of the TV, did you also find yourself passing up other opportunities to relax—such as when a friend invited you out for dinner, or when you happened to see an interesting magazine lying on the table in your home that just beckoned to be read?

You Might Want to Improve . . .

So far, I’ve explained the benefits of mental contrasting by showing how this short and simple exercise affects people’s conscious thought and nonconscious perception of reality. But mental contrasting also works on an entirely different level to help people pursue and attain their wishes. One reason Joni might achieve her wish of doing well on her philosophy exam is that she is better at responding to the negative feedback of her professor, her peers, and others. Previous research has shown that people who are pursuing goals benefit from negative feedback, since it allows them to adjust their behavior and do what they need to do to acquire new skills.10 Yet depending on what it is and how it is given, negative feedback can be hard to handle, threatening the way individuals see themselves, affecting their beliefs in their own competences, and sometimes making their wishes seem out of their grasp. People tend to forget negative feedback, even when it is trivial, and remember instead the affirming things others say about them.11 In some cases, people who receive negative feedback tend to lose heart and pursue their wishes less energetically.

I wondered whether mental contrasting would shelter people from losing heart when receiving negative feedback, or, even better, help them make use of the constructive information negative feedback may contain.

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