Rethinking Positive Thinking

Gabriele Oettingen: Well, positive thinking is a wide term, so in order to understand the effects of positive thinking, now and later, you need to be careful in differentiating what positive thinking actually is. So, when we usually see positive thinking we think of positive dreaming and the future – positive visions, positive images and thoughts about the future – and they might be helpful for the situation right now, in the sense that it's pleasurable to dream about the future, and that you can explore the various possibilities and opportunities that the future might hold for you in the mind.

In front of the mind's eye you can have these scenarios, and you can have all these events which might happen or which might not happen in the future, but when it comes to actually realizing – attaining – your desired future, then merely dreaming does not help you.

And we found in many studies that while positive fantasies and daydreams about the future are helpful right now in terms of giving you pleasure, they are not helpful or even detrimental when it comes to actually reaching this desired future. So, for example, the more positively overweight women who enrolled in a weight loss program fantasized about the future, the less weight they had lost after a year, or the more positively university graduates fantasized about getting a job, the less likely they were to get the job offers and the less money they earned two years later on.

Rachel Salaman: So did you come up with any reasons why that might be the case?

Gabriele Oettingen: At first, we thought positive dreams might be positive like everyone else thought – that positive dreams are positive in terms of also realizing the future – but then we got study after study, we understood that positive fantasies and positive dreams about the future have their cause when it comes to actually putting in the necessary effort, and the necessary action and the necessary thought in order to go the complex way of realizing the future.

So then we understood that the people who fantasized about their successes in the future, that these people actually already attained their future in their mind's eye and got the pleasure from these mental experiences of the successes in the future, they didn't feel the necessity to actually look at the hard way: at the obstacles, at the temptations, at the relinquishments which are demanded when you want to reach a desired future which is kind of complex to reach.

So we understood that by imagining and by experiencing already the desired future in the here and now that people kind of overlooked the obstacles – they didn't plan for them, they overlooked the temptations which were coming. They did not prepare themselves for these hard challenges on the way to wish fulfillment, and in addition, in their mind already could have consumed the pleasurable future, so there was really no need to actually attain it in reality.

Rachel Salaman: Now you studied under Martin Seligman at the University of Pennsylvania, Seligman being the founder of the positive psychology movement. Could you tell us how your ideas in this new book relate to his main theories?

Gabriele Oettingen: When I worked with Martin Seligman that was a time where the positive psychology program was not existing yet, and he was very much interested in optimism. But at that time optimism was defined as expectations about the future meaning about judgments, whether it is likely or not that a certain future event or future behavior will occur or not occur, and when I came to Penn I was very much interested in the concept of hope, and I always thought that the researchers at that time used the term hope and optimism in the same sense that they were missing out something: namely that you can have hope despite the fact that the likelihood is really low; that the chances of success are really dim.

At that time then I thought, "Well, there is a different kind of thinking about the future which are dreams and fantasies, which are doing their spiel too, not only the expectations." So these daydreams and fantasies play a different role than expectations, and what we found is while these expectations that are based on past performance are actually predicting very well that you do well in the future if you have optimistic expectations, meaning you did well in the past, you have optimistic expectations because you did well in the past, and that predicts that you do well in the future, but very differently are these positive fantasies and daydreams.

These positive fantasies and daydreams actually predict negatively like I just said. The more positively people fantasize, for example, about doing well in an exam, the less well they do; the more positively people fantasize about recovering from hip replacement surgery – this is another study which we did – the less well they actually recovered. And even in newspaper reports about economic developments: so the more positively these newspaper reports, the less well the stock market develops over the subsequent weeks.

So it seems that these fantasies and daydreams, which actually stem from people's needs and from people's wishes, that they are helpful, not when it comes to enjoyment in the present, but when it comes to actually realizing the desired future and going the complicated and effortful way to attaining the future.

Rachel Salaman: Another aspect of the positive psychology movement is the pursuit of happiness. How does that fit into your take on positive thinking? Because I noticed it wasn't very prominent in your book.

Gabriele Oettingen: The idea of happiness is not looming large in terms of "I want to be happy all the time," but it is in the book kind of implicitly saying you need to explore your wishes: you need to explore what belongs to you – what you feel is your task – and then you go about pursuing that task and everything else will unfold by itself. You can't pursue happiness in the sense that you want to be happy: you need to understand what is your wish. How would it feel to actually do what I think will fulfill me and then what stands in the way and then we are with mental contrasting.

Rachel Salaman: Yes. Now you mention mental contrasting, which is one of the central ideas of your book, so tell us about that.

Gabriele Oettingen: What we just said about fantasies is that they are helpful when it comes to present mode and they are helpful in terms of exploring the possibilities of my doing, my achieving in the future, that make me fulfilled – I would not even say happy but which satisfy me – which fulfill me where I feel I belong. So these are the positive fantasies, but as we've said these positive fantasies alone don't bring me there.

What we inferred from our first studies where we found the detrimental effects of positive fantasies on effortful action, on complex thinking; we've understood that people overlooked the obstacles and they overlooked the temptations on the way to wish fulfillment, and therefore we designed an experiment where we just gave these obstacles to people. So we asked them name a wish – to name the best outcome of that wish – so where they could actually imagine that best outcome, but then instead of letting them just run, we asked them, "Now what holds you back? What is it in you that stands in the way of fulfilling that wish? What is your main obstacle?" And then people needed to understand and needed to search and needed to acknowledge what is it actually in them that holds them back from fulfilling that wish, and by understanding that obstacle, people got the energy and the motivation to overcome that obstacle and to actually go and achieve the desired future.

Rachel Salaman: So how can mental contrasting be applied, for example, in the workplace?

Gabriele Oettingen: When you juxtapose your dreams and fantasies about the future with what holds you back – what is the main obstacle that stands in the way of achieving that future you will understand where to go; whether you should actually put in effort and complex thinking into reaching the future, or whether you should better delegate it or give it up. So it is a strategy that helps you to select which projects are important; which goals are important for you at the moment for you at the moment to pursue and which ones you should better let go.

So, it liberates you from this kind of state of being just overburdened with too many projects you neither can fully go for nor you can disengage from or let go. So, for example, you can use mental contrasting for longer-term wishes you might have in the workplace, such as you have a wish for example to be working more effectively in your job – you want to do more of that what you really like and what you think you're good at.

So, if that's your wish you elaborate on that wish and then you say, "Now, what stands in the way that I do that? What is it in me that holds me back from actually doing what I really want to do?" And then you might discover some emotions that hold you back – maybe some fears – you might discover some organizational principles you don't watch; for example that you don't really have some clarity on your computer or whatever. It's very simple things which you then can mend and overcome or some hurt feelings or whatever. You find out the obstacle in you, and by doing that you understand how to overcome that obstacle or whether the obstacle is such that you better delegate, realizing that wish to a better time or let go.

But what is important when you do mental contrasting is that you actually find out about the obstacle that is a real obstacle in you, because if you find obstacles in the workplace or in your partner or in the system, they cannot be changed, but what you can do is change yourself, and by finding the obstacles in you, you will be able to understand how to overcome them and you start getting involved again into wish fulfillment. And often these wishes have been kind of dormant for a while, because first of all you did not dare to think about these wishes, and second of all you didn't dare to actually think about what holds me back from fulfilling these wishes. So in a way you need to be honest with yourself: "What is it really that holds me back from doing what I wish to do?"

Rachel Salaman: How can someone find what's holding them back within themselves? Because it's a very difficult thing to analyze isn't it, when you're so close to the wish and the problem?

Gabriele Oettingen: Well, usually it's not so difficult. People know themselves pretty well. Sometimes they're a little relaxed to admit in front of themselves what really holds them back, but very often it is that we just don't take the time any more to actually think about these things, and we are not taught to think about the obstacles because we are taught to think positively.

So if you understand with a little bit of humor – a little bit of a grin about yourself – "What is it in me actually that prevents me from fulfilling my wish or from going after my wish?" you will understand it pretty fast. These obstacles will present themselves to you, and take the one most important obstacle, not a lot of obstacles, because this one most important obstacle you can overcome. If there are too many then you have too many excuses, so finding the obstacle is also getting rid of the excuses.

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Rachel Salaman: In the book you mentioned that you've also looked at the use of mental contrasting for negative future fantasies as well as positive ones. That's interesting: can you tell us about your findings there?

Gabriele Oettingen: I will tell you about a study we did and then give you an example of how you can use that.

So, sometimes it's hard for us to fantasize about a positive future. So, think about when you are going to the dentist for example; it's hard to fantasize positively about going to the dentist. So what you can do is if you have fantasies about a negative future and they cause you fears and anxieties, and they vex you, and you know that these anxieties are really unjustified, you need to go there anyway: you need to go to the dentist and these fears are unjustified. Then what you can do is imagine the negative future and you imagine like you did with the positive future: you just mentally experience the negative future and in a way you can embrace your fears, and then you imagine, first identify and imagine the obstacles that stand in the way that these fears will come true, and you will find in reality a lot of obstacles that will speak against the fact that these fears will come true, and that puts you in a warm bath of relief.

So, in the case of the dentist you might say, "What stands in the way is that my dentist is a real good one, I have had him for the last five years and at the end of the day I always left the office pretty happy and that this time it might be not such a big procedure" or whatever.

If you can't refute this, then it will tell you "Maybe I should change the dentist. Maybe this dentist is not such a good one and I should look for a new one."

So, by understanding what the obstacles are that make these negative fears come true, you understand that these fears are irrational, and if they are not irrational then that gives you a hint that you actually should do something now.

Rachel Salaman: Let's talk about WOOP now, which is the acronym from your book. It's short for wish, outcome, obstacle, and plan, so it incorporates aspects of mental contrasting. Could you tell us about how it works in practice?

Gabriele Oettingen: What mental contrasting does, it connects the desired future to the obstacles of reality. So, if you mentally contrast a feasible wish – a wish where you expect that this is possible for you to fulfill – then you cannot really think about that wish any more; you cannot fantasize about that wish any more without the obstacle appearing right away.

At the same time, mental contrasting links or produces mental associations outside of awareness. Mental associations between the obstacles of reality and the instrumental means to overcome the reality. So you think future, the obstacles kind of shoot in, and the obstacle is then linked to the instrumental means. At the same time, the obstacle is now really presenting itself as an obstacle: it feels like an obstacle.

So, for example, the party is not a fun event any more; when you think about the desired future of doing well in an exam on Tuesday, the party on Saturday is not a fun event any more, it is now an obstacle to achieving well on Tuesday. So mental contrasting in that sense changes the meaning of reality, and by doing that it influences your behavior. It also changes the implicit outside of awareness level of energy, and we can measure that by systolic blood pressure. So when you do mental contrasting of a feasible wish then energy goes up – your blood pressure goes up – so basically your body prepares you for action, and that mediates then, or that predicts then your behavior of actually putting in the effort and attaining success – so wish fulfillment.

Now when you do WOOP it is basically the mental contrasting exercise, but what we do with WOOP, we combine the mental contrasting exercise with a concept which is called implementation intentions. And implementation intentions are simple if-then plans, which have been discovered by Peter Gollwitzer who is a professor of psychology at NYU, and these implementation intentions are if- then plans: if a certain situation occurs, then our goal directed behavior will be implemented.

And basically, in mentally contrasting already the link between the obstacle and the instrumental means to overcome the obstacle are already such if-then connections, but if we put the if-then plans explicitly on top of mental contrasting, then we get better results than if we only have mental contrasting or we only have implementation intentions.

So implementation intentions have been shown to work really well in many areas of life to actually fulfill our goals, but they have as a prerequisite that these goals are already set; that people already are determined to reach these goals, and they already identified their obstacles to overcome in reaching these goals, and so it is a very fruitful combination, because mental contrasting commits people and really makes us love and embrace wish fulfillment. It defines the obstacles; we discover these obstacles in the mental contrasting exercise, and we discover also the instrumental means to overcome the obstacles; and all these are prerequisites of implementation intentions to show their effects. And if we then put implementation intentions on top of mental contrasting, then we have shown that this works actually even better in fulfilling our wishes than if we have the two elements of WOOP singly or apart.

Rachel Salaman: Yes, let's think of an example to illustrate WOOP then, perhaps going back to the weight loss example you used earlier. If we think of a woman who might want to lose weight, how would she use the wish outcome obstacle and plan steps?

Gabriele Oettingen: A woman or a man who wanted to lose weight first needs to understand "What is my wish regarding weight loss? What would I like to achieve in terms of weight loss?" And then very often it helps to put a timeframe on that. So my wish, let's say for the next week, would be to lose two pounds, or they might frame it in terms of "My wish for the next week is to at least do exercise for half an hour three times a week," or the wish might be "I really wish to cut out sweets or I wish to eat more vegetables" or whatever. So first of all you need to understand what is your wish with regards to weight loss.

You might also say, "What is my wish for the next 24 hours in terms of weight loss?" You can say, "OK, it would be great if I ate no set things today in the cafeteria." So you could actually use WOOP with respect to long-term goals. You could also say for the next year with respect to long-term goals, for middle-range goals, or for the next 24 hours.

So it's important that you first identify a wish which is actually dear to you, which is important and which you feel some emotion, some passion for, and what you then do is you keep it in front of your mind, and then you identify what would be the best outcome if I fulfill that wish, and very often this is an emotion or it is a consequence which you feel strongly about in daily life, like improvement of an interaction or improvement of a relationship or more self-respect or whatever. And once you identified that outcome then you let your mind go and you imagine that outcome, and just take your time and don't do anything else while you do WOOP.

And once you've imagined that outcome then the obstacle comes and you say, "Now what holds me back from achieving that wish and experiencing that outcome? What is it in me that stands in the way that I actually achieve that?" And once you've identified that, then you imagine that obstacle, and by imagining that you will discover a lot of possibilities of overcoming that obstacle, and after that you take most effective possibility and you identify that behavior as the behavior to overcome that obstacle.

And as a final step then for the plan you say if obstacle, and then you imagine your obstacle occurring, and then you say then behavior and you put in the behavior in that phrase that you identified before to overcome that obstacle, so you say if obstacle then behavior. This is then a plan you can repeat once or twice; you imagine if the obstacle occurs then I will perform the behavior, and that's really all.

This is the four-step process you get when you do WOOP, so you identify a wish, you identify the outcome, you imagine the outcome, you identify the obstacle, you imagine the obstacle and then you do an if-then plan. If obstacle, then behavior plan.

Rachel Salaman: So could it be as simple as, for example, if I'm offered a brownie then I will say no. Can it be that simple?

Gabriele Oettingen: It can be that simple. It can be anything where you feel it's your obstacle, you can say, "My obstacle is the brownies at lunch in the cafeteria, so I always run by these brownies" and if you specified at lunch in the cafeteria it might be even more effective. So: "If I see the brownie at the cafeteria then I turn my back to the brownie and engage in conversation with somebody next to me."

Rachel Salaman: So I guess most people would just find what kind of if-then plan works for them, like how specific they need it to be in order to work.

Gabriele Oettingen: Right, so you need to be careful that it's the right if-then plan; it's always an if-obstacle, then I will overcome obstacle. You can also do if-opportune situation: then I will prevent obstacle from occurring. So if I come to the cafeteria, I take the aisle where there are only fruits so I don't even encounter the brownies.

Rachel Salaman: What about applying some of these principles to motivate teams. How might that work?

Gabriele Oettingen: That can work on many levels. So for example, you can do WOOP in teams with respect to wishes which pertain to team goals or team wishes. So there would be still individual WOOPs but the wish would pertain to actually better performance, or more harmony, or conflict resolution in teams, so that's a very simple application of WOOP in teams.

You could also do WOOP in dyads or in triads or in bigger teams, where you actually go about the four steps and have the team work on these four steps. That's certainly a kind of discussion process which would change the imagery part, but if you go through the four steps in teams so that they find common wishes; they find obstacles in discussion in the team. You could use WOOP in that way too.

Rachel Salaman: So we've covered quite a lot of ground in this discussion. What do you think are the three key takeaways?

Gabriele Oettingen: The first takeaway is clear: we need to think about positive thinking in a more differentiated way, and by looking at the research we will get a lot of information which we will not get from sources that are thinking about positive thinking in a kind of normative or what is a plausible way. So looking at research here I think is very helpful.

The second point is that when we look at mental contrasting and WOOP, we understand that our minds can be used to change behavior in a way that we do conscious exercises with consequences which are outside of our awareness, which then affect the behavior change. So we can use now tools to program our minds that then outside of awareness help us in behavior change.

And the third takeaway is that we can actually learn and use these tools, or we can learn mental contrasting, and WOOP in a very efficient way so that it liberates us from going to trainers, therapists, coaches. And we can actually use it as a tool in order to involve ourselves in life to make it more happy if you want, but more meaningful in the first place, and more meaningful for our own development, but also for the development of the people around us.

Rachel Salaman: Gabriele Oettingen, thanks very much for joining us.

Gabriele Oettingen: Thank you for taking the time, and I hope WOOP as a kind of daily friend will help you.

Rachel Salaman: The name of Gabriele's book again is "Rethinking Positive Thinking: Inside the New Science of Motivation" and you can find out more about the WOOP process at woopmylife.org.

I'll be back in a few weeks with another Expert Interview. Until then goodbye.