Mental contrasting and transfer of energization

在心理上将期望的未来与目前的现实进行对比是一种自我调节策略，它根据对成功的高期望和低期望来激发活力(Oettingen等人，2009年)。这种被激发的能量推动了实现期望未来的努力，甚至转移到了与心理对比所针对的期望未来无关的任务上(Sevincer，Busatta，&Oettingen，2014)。在目前的项目中，我们研究如何根据情况的需求来转移能量，以促进对无关任务的能量转移。具体地说，我们怀疑，当人们没有机会执行他们的初始任务或替代任务来实现他们的初始目标时，关于初始任务的心理对比会促使人们将精力转移到一个无关的任务上(研究1和2)。此外，我们想要测试在应用语境中使用心理对比的这些新的可能性。具体地说，我们在现场调查了通过心理对比进行能量转移是否会提高无关任务的绩效，而不考虑参与者对无关任务的期望。也就是说，即使参与者对无关任务的期望值很低。在两项干预研究中，我们计划考察在人际关系领域(分别是体育领域)对一个重要愿望进行心理对比的小学生是否会激发能量，然后将能量转移到词汇学习的表现上(分别学习数学；研究3和研究4)。本项目对能量作为一种激活状态的概念有理论上的影响，这种状态可以通过特定任务的心理对比而引发，但可以通过结转来推动无关任务的努力；它对开发干预措施以帮助人们处理他们最初对成功的期望较低的任务产生了影响。激励人们完成他们最初期望较低的任务，是干预研究中的一个长期挑战，特别是在学术背景下，本项目为此提供了一种新的方法。

Mentally contrasting a desired future with present reality is a self-regulation strategy that elicits energization depending on high vs. low expectations of success (Oettingen et al., 2009). The elicited energization fuels effort toward fulfilling the desired future and even transfers to effort for tasks that are unrelated to the desired future targeted by mental contrasting (Sevincer, Busatta, & Oettingen, 2014). In the present project, we examine how the transfer of energization can be applied depending on the demands of a situation to foster energization for unrelated tasks. Specifically, we suspect that mental contrasting about an initial task instigates energization transfer to an unrelated task when people do not have the opportunity to perform their initial or a substitute task to attain their initial goal (Studies 1 and 2). Furthermore, we want to test these new possibilities of the use of mental contrasting in applied contexts. Specifically, we investigate in the field whether energization transfer by mental contrasting boosts performance for unrelated tasks irrespective of participants’ expectations for the unrelated tasks. That is, even when participants expectations for the unrelated tasks are low. In two intervention studies, we plan to examine whether school children who mentally contrast an important wish from the interpersonal domain (sports domain, respectively) for which they have high expectations elicits energization that then transfers to performance in learning vocabulary (studying math, respectively; Studies 3 and 4). The present project has theoretical implications for the concept of energization as an activation state that can be elicited by task-specific mental contrasting but can carry-over to fuel effort in unrelated tasks; it has applied implications for developing interventions to help people address tasks for which they initially have low expectations of success. Energizing people for tasks for which they initially have low expectations is a long-standing challenge in intervention research, in particular in academic contexts, for which the present project offers a new approach.