Does Mental Rehearsal Help a Decision
Rehearsal helps when it runs through the steps and does worse when it runs through the result. The studies behind that measured skills, grades and recovery, and none scored a decision.
Answer to the question
Does mental rehearsal improve a decision?
Mental rehearsal can improve how a decision is carried out when it runs through the steps, as in a 1999 study of freshmen rehearsing how they would study. Rehearsing only the result predicted less effort and poorer outcomes in four 2002 studies. None of the studies scored the quality of the decision itself.
Key takeaways
- Lien Pham and Shelley Taylor found in 1999 that freshmen who rehearsed the process of studying for five to seven days before a midterm studied more and improved their grades, with the grade effect running through better planning and lower anxiety.
- In four studies published in 2002, Gabriele Oettingen found that positive fantasies about the future predicted less effort and worse outcomes, including among 51 hip-replacement patients.
- A 1983 meta-analysis of 60 studies found mental practice of skills had an average effect size of 0.48, larger for cognitive tasks than for motor and strength tasks.
- The 2005 review of affective forecasting by Timothy Wilson and Daniel Gilbert reports a tendency to expect feelings to be more intense and to last longer than they do, so a vivid scene of the result misleads on feeling.
- None of these studies scored decision quality against a control, and Daniel Kahneman's account of Gary Klein's premortem reports no trial of it.
Four kinds of mental run-through have been tested: of a skill, of the steps in a plan, of the outcome, and of how it will feel. Mental rehearsal helps a decision when it runs through the steps and hurts when it runs through the result.
| Kind of run-through | What was tested | What was measured | What it did |
|---|---|---|---|
| A skill (chair flying) | Meta-analyses, 1983 and 1994 | Later performance on the rehearsed task | Helped, modestly, more for thinking tasks |
| The steps of a plan | Freshmen before a midterm, 1999 | Studying and exam grades | Helped |
| The outcome | Four studies, 2002 | Job offers, relationships, grades, recovery ratings | Predicted worse results |
| How the outcome will feel | Review of forecasts, 2005 | Predicted against actual feelings | Overstated intensity and length |
| The failure (premortem) | Not tested in the book | None | Proposed, not shown |
What fighter pilots rehearse
None of the studies scored decision quality against a control group, so the evidence for decisions is indirect. Hasard Lee, a United States Air Force fighter pilot, describes chair flying in The Art of Clear Thinking (2023) as eyes-closed, multisensory rehearsal of a whole flight, with any manoeuvre botched in the mind repeated until it comes out right. It is the fifth of his five pillars of mental toughness. He credits it to Second World War aviators and says it has since had "slight alterations based on modern neuroscience" (p. 216), which he does not name.
slight alterations based on modern neuroscience
Chair flying sits at the top of a ladder he describes on p. 211, from simulator repetition up through flights under load, bad weather and system failures, so it supplements the real practice and does not replace it. The book cites no study showing that visualising a task improves it.
Studies of mental rehearsal for skills do exist.
A 1983 meta-analysis of 60 studies in the Journal of Sport Psychology found an average effect size of 0.48 for mental practice on later performance, larger for cognitive tasks than for motor and strength tasks. A 1994 meta-analysis in the Journal of Applied Psychology also found a positive and significant effect on performance, moderated by the type of task and by the interval between practice and performance. Skills of that kind have a known sequence to run through, such as a flight or a set of movements. Many decisions have no such sequence until someone builds one, and the sequence is what the next study rehearsed.
Rehearsing the steps, not the result
In a 1999 study, Lien Pham and Shelley Taylor asked college freshmen to simulate one of four things for five to seven days before a midterm: the process of studying for it, the outcome of a good grade, both, or neither, with a self-monitoring task as the control. Simulating the process increased studying and improved grades, and the grade effect ran through better planning and lower anxiety. The control group did a self-monitoring task, so the comparison is between kinds of mental activity and not between thinking and doing nothing. The paper reports the group that pictured only the grade scoring below the group that pictured only the studying.
Mental rehearsal of this kind is also different from the self-address covered in What Distanced Self-Talk Sounds Like, which changes the viewpoint on a decision and does not walk through the steps.
The measure was one midterm among first-year students, and the paper is read here at the level of its abstract. Within those limits, what the process group rehearsed was a sequence of actions within their own control. That is the part of a decision that can be run through in advance, the route from choosing to carrying it out, and a grade is not something a student can start doing while a study plan is.
Why picturing the result costs effort
Gabriele Oettingen separates expectations, a judgement of how likely a wanted outcome is, from fantasies, mental images of the wanted future. In four studies published in 2002, positive expectations predicted more effort and better results, and positive fantasies predicted the reverse. Graduating students who fantasised more positively about working life received fewer job offers and lower salaries, among the 40 of 83 followed up two years later. Undergraduates with more positive fantasies about their academic achievement studied less and improved less from midterm to final.
The pattern held for private life and health too.
Students with a crush who fantasised more positively were less likely to start a relationship within five months. Among 51 hip-replacement patients, those with more positive fantasies of recovery were rated as recovering less well two weeks after surgery, on all three of the physiotherapists' measures.
These four studies were correlational, with fantasies measured and not assigned. An experimental follow-up in 2011 found that induced positive fantasies lowered energy, which the first of its four studies measured as a fall in systolic blood pressure of about three millimetres of mercury. On the route Oettingen proposes, mental rehearsal of success alone, picturing the result as already achieved, relaxes the person and lowers the effort they put in.
It is a cousin of the worry in Why Announcing Your Goal Can Backfire, where credit taken early weakens the work. The paper's content analysis of the hip patients' fantasies found that they tended to idealise both a perfect outcome and an effortless path to it, so the picture left out the steps as well as the obstacles.
Her group's remedy is mental contrasting.
A person pictures the wanted result, then pictures what stands in its way, and attaches an if-then plan to the obstacle. A 2021 meta-analysis of 21 studies and about 15,900 participants found an average effect of 0.34 on goal attainment for that combined method, with its authors warning that publication bias may make the true effect smaller. For a decision, the useful part is the pairing: the wanted result is held next to what blocks it, and the obstacle gets a plan.
What a vivid scene leaves out
A mental rehearsal of a decision usually includes a scene of the result, and so a forecast of how it will feel. Timothy Wilson and Daniel Gilbert's 2005 review of affective forecasting reports that people overstate how intense and how long their future feelings will be, a pattern called the impact bias. One cause is focalism: the imagined event fills the picture, and the other events that will shape the person's feelings are left out of it. Another is that people fail to foresee how fast they will make sense of what happened and recover, a pattern strongest for negative events.
Many choices are made for the sake of a feeling, such as relief, pride or security, so a biased forecast of that feeling bears directly on the choice. The review does not test rehearsal as a technique. It describes what imagined futures leave out, and a vivid scene adds detail without correcting that. The question it suggests, and we are inferring the use here, is what else will fill the week in which the decision takes effect. The same two researchers appear in Why Ten Quiet Minutes Feel So Long, on what people do with unfilled thinking time.
Starting from the failure
Gary Klein's premortem turns mental rehearsal round. Before a team commits to a plan, its members imagine that the plan was carried out and failed, then write the history of the failure, which aims at the moment after a team has agreed, when dissent is costly to voice. Daniel Kahneman, who describes it in Thinking, Fast and Slow, explains its value in social terms: it legitimises doubt in a team that has already reached agreement. He calls it not a panacea, and the book presents no trial of it.
It is the only kind here run by a group.
The others were tested on individuals, and it belongs beside the process rehearsals because it asks for causes, a chain of things that could go wrong, and not for a picture of the end.
Taken together, the pattern is plain. Imagining the actions a person controls helped, and imagining the results a person wants did worse. For a choice about to be made, list the steps in order and name what is likeliest to stop each one. Write a single if-then plan for the worst of them, and hold any forecast of how the outcome will feel as a guess. The one kind aimed straight at choices, the premortem, is also the one with no test behind it.
Common questions
Does mental rehearsal improve a decision?
It can improve how a decision is carried out when mental rehearsal covers the steps, as in a 1999 study of students rehearsing how they would study. Rehearsing only the result predicted less effort and poorer outcomes in four 2002 studies. None of the studies scored the quality of the decision itself.
Is visualising success a good way to prepare?
Not on its own. In Oettingen's 2002 studies of mental rehearsal and fantasy, positive fantasies of success predicted less effort and poorer results in job-seeking, courtship, study and recovery from surgery. Adding the obstacle and an if-then plan has the better record, with a 2021 meta-analysis averaging 0.34. The 2002 studies were correlational, so they show a prediction and not a proven cause, though a 2011 experiment found a drop in energy after positive fantasies.
What is chair flying?
Chair flying is eyes-closed rehearsal of a whole flight, repeated until every manoeuvre comes out right in the mind. Hasard Lee credits it to Second World War aviators in The Art of Clear Thinking, and the book gives no study of its effect.
Does a premortem work?
The evidence for it is thin. Daniel Kahneman describes Gary Klein's premortem in Thinking, Fast and Slow as a way to make doubt legitimate in a team that has already agreed, and he writes that it is not a panacea. The book reports no controlled test of it.
Sources
Lee, H. (2023). The Art of Clear Thinking. Chair flying and the five pillars of mental toughness, pp. 210 to 216; the rehearsal ladder, p. 211.
Feltz, D. L., & Landers, D. M. (1983). 'The effects of mental practice on motor skill learning and performance: A meta-analysis.' Journal of Sport Psychology, 5(1), 25-57. doi:10.1123/jsp.5.1.25
Driskell, J. E., Copper, C., & Moran, A. (1994). 'Does mental practice enhance performance?' Journal of Applied Psychology, 79(4), 481-492. doi:10.1037/0021-9010.79.4.481
Pham, L. B., & Taylor, S. E. (1999). 'From thought to action: Effects of process- versus outcome-based mental simulations on performance.' Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin, 25(2), 250-260. doi:10.1177/0146167299025002010
Oettingen, G., & Mayer, D. (2002). 'The motivating function of thinking about the future: Expectations versus fantasies.' Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 83(5), 1198-1212. doi:10.1037/0022-3514.83.5.1198
Kappes, H. B., & Oettingen, G. (2011). 'Positive fantasies about idealized futures sap energy.' Journal of Experimental Social Psychology, 47(4), 719-729. doi:10.1016/j.jesp.2011.02.003
Wang, G., Wang, Y., & Gai, X. (2021). 'A meta-analysis of the effects of mental contrasting with implementation intentions on goal attainment.' Frontiers in Psychology, 12, 565202. doi:10.3389/fpsyg.2021.565202
Wilson, T. D., & Gilbert, D. T. (2005). 'Affective forecasting: Knowing what to want.' Current Directions in Psychological Science, 14(3), 131-134. doi:10.1111/j.0963-7214.2005.00355.x
Kahneman, D. (2011). Thinking, Fast and Slow. Chapter 24, the premortem. Klein, G. (2007). 'Performing a project premortem.' Harvard Business Review, September 2007.