Mental contrasting and transfer of energization

在心理上将期望的未来与当前的现实进行对比是一种自我调节策略，它依赖于对成功的高期望与低期望（Oettingen et al.，2009年）。引发的情绪刺激努力实现期望的未来，甚至转移到与心理对比所针对的期望未来无关的任务上（Sevincer，Busatta，& Oettingen，2014）。在本项目中，我们将研究如何根据情境的需求来应用迁移，以促进不相关任务的迁移。具体来说，我们怀疑，心理对比的初始任务煽动转移到一个不相关的任务时，人们没有机会执行他们的初始或替代任务，以达到他们的初始目标（研究1和2）。此外，我们还想在实际应用中检验心理对比的这些新的可能性。具体来说，我们调查在现场是否通过心理对比的迁移提高性能无关的任务，而不管参与者的期望无关的任务。也就是说，即使参与者对不相关任务的期望很低。在两项干预研究中，我们计划研究是否学生心理对比的一个重要的愿望，从人际领域（体育领域，分别），他们有很高的期望eleconflamed，然后转移到性能在学习词汇（学习数学，分别;研究3和4）。本项目具有理论意义的概念，作为一种激活状态，可以引起特定任务的心理对比，但可以结转到燃料的努力，在不相关的任务，它已应用的影响，制定干预措施，以帮助人们解决任务，他们最初有低的成功期望。激励人们完成他们最初期望值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.