Mental Contrasting

What it is

Mental contrasting grew out of a distinction in Gabriele Oettingen's work between two ways of thinking about the future. Expectations are judgements of how likely a wanted outcome is, grounded in past performance. Fantasies are free imagery of the accomplished future. In four studies published in 2002, Oettingen and Doris Mayer found that positive expectations predicted more effort and better results, and that positive fantasies predicted the reverse.

The studies followed graduating students into their first jobs, students with a crush toward a possible relationship, undergraduates through a midterm and a final, and patients recovering from hip-replacement surgery. Positive fantasies predicted fewer job offers and lower salaries, a lower chance of starting a relationship, less studying and less grade improvement, and poorer recovery as rated by physiotherapists two weeks after surgery. These studies were correlational. The fantasies were measured and not assigned.

An experimental follow-up by Heather Kappes and Oettingen in 2011 found that induced positive fantasies lowered energy. In the first of its four studies the measure was systolic blood pressure, which fell by about three millimetres of mercury. The proposed route is that picturing the future as already achieved relaxes the person and lowers the effort they put into reaching it.

Mental contrasting is the practical answer. The person elaborates the wished-for future and then elaborates what stands in the way, and lets the two sit against each other. In the full protocol an if-then plan is then attached to the obstacle, borrowing from Peter Gollwitzer's implementation intentions. The combination is called mental contrasting with implementation intentions, and the popular form is WOOP, for wish, outcome, obstacle, plan.

A 2021 meta-analysis by Wang, Wang and Gai, covering 21 studies and about 15,900 participants, reported an average effect of 0.34 on goal attainment for the combined method, larger when delivered with a live experimenter than on paper.

In effect

In research

In the hip-replacement study, 51 patients admitted for a first hip replacement were asked about their fantasies and expectations. Those with more positive fantasies of recovery were rated as recovering less well on all three of the physiotherapists' measures: hip joint motion, stair walking and general recovery. A content analysis found that positive fantasies tended to idealise both a perfect outcome and an effortless process.

In everyday planning

A student who pictures the grade is in the position of the positive fantasiser. The mental contrasting version adds whatever the student names as likely to get in the way, and then a rule for that case. The if-then plan is the part with its own evidence base, because Gollwitzer's meta-analysis of implementation intentions is large, though later estimates for specific domains are smaller.

In a decision

Mental contrasting applies to a choice already made and now to be carried out. It does not decide between options. The article on mental rehearsal and decisions sets it beside process simulation, which has a similar emphasis on steps, and beside the premortem, which asks for the causes of failure.

What it does not say

It does not say that imagining the future is bad. Oettingen's claim is that expecting to succeed and picturing success have opposite effects, and her method keeps the wish and adds the obstacle.

It does not say the effect is large or certain. The 2021 authors note that publication bias may make the true effect smaller, and the small number of studies limits what can be said about the conditions under which it works.

It does not isolate the contrasting step. The meta-analysis is of the combined method with planning, so it supports the package and not the picture of the obstacle on its own.

It does not rest on experiments in the 2002 studies. Those were correlational.

A claim that positive fantasies lead to long-term increases in depressive symptoms could not be verified from a primary source and is not carried here.

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