Spontaneous mental contrasting and selective goal pursuit.

Mental contrasting and the self-regulation of responding to negative feedback.

Mentally contrasting a desired future with impeding reality promotes goal pursuit when expectations of success are high and curbs goal pursuit when expectations of success are low. Four studies tested whether mental contrasting affects responses to goal-relevant negative feedback. Mental contrasting promoted the processing of negative feedback (Studies 1 and 2), which in turn helped participant...

Making Goal Pursuit Effective: Expectancy-Dependent Goal Setting and Planned Goal Striving

Setting Goals 129 Effective Goal Setting: The Strategy of Mental Contrasting 129 Empirical Evidence 130 Mechanisms of Mental Contrasting 132 Summary 135 Implementing Set Goals 135 The Distinction Between Goal Intentions and Implementation Intentions 135 Implementation Intentions and Solving Problems of Goal Striving 136 Summary 139 An Intervention to Facilitate Effective Goal Pursuit: Combining...

The emergence of goal pursuit: Mental contrasting connects future and reality

Mental contrasting instigates goal pursuit by linking obstacles of reality with instrumental behavior

Mental Contrasting of a Negative Future with a Positive Reality Regulates State Anxiety

Mental contrasting of a desired future with impeding reality is a self-regulatory strategy fostering goal pursuit. However, there is little research on mental contrasting of a negative future with a positive reality. We conducted two experiments, each with four experimental conditions, investigating the effects of mental contrasting a negative future with a positive reality on state anxiety: pa...