Seeing Future Success: Does Imagery Perspective Influence Achievement Motivation?

Abstract

Imagining future success can sometimes enhance people's motivation to achieve it. This article examines a phenomenological aspect of positive mental imagery--the visual perspective adopted--that may moderate its motivational impact. The authors hypothesize that people feel more motivated to succeed on a future task when they visualize its successful completion from a third-person rather than a first-person perspective. Actions viewed from the third-person perspective are generally construed at a relatively high level of abstraction--in a manner that highlights their larger meaning and significance--which should heighten their motivational impact. Three studies in the domain of academic motivation support this reasoning. Students experience a greater increase in achievement motivation when they imagine their successful task completion from a third-rather than a first-person perspective. Moreover, mediational analyses reveal that third-person imagery boosts motivation by prompting students to construe their success abstractly and to perceive it as important.

Encouraging bigger-picture thinking in an intervention to target multiple obesogenic health behaviours

“…In contrast, with the third-person perspective the individual sees the event from the perspective of an observer, viewing themself in the image as well as their surroundings, thereby allowing them to "see the bigger picture". This effect has been observed for a number of different behaviours, such as studying (Vasquez & Buehler, 2007) and voting (Libby, Shaeffer, Eibach, & Slemmer, 2007) as well as health behaviours such as fruit and vegetable consumption and physical activity (Rennie, Harris & Webb, 2016).…”

“…One strategy that helps target these predictive behaviors is to visualize oneself in engaging them (e.g., Knäuper et al, 2011). Further, research has shown that visualising behaviours using the more distanced perspective of an observer helps to "see the bigger picture" and thereby link the visualised behaviour to broader goals (Vasquez & Buehler, 2007;Libby & Eibach, 2011;Kross & Grossmann, 2012), with the potential to result in behaviour change across multiple domains. The present research aims to investigate whether this effect can be utilised in a brief visualisation intervention, resulting in beneficial behaviour change in two behaviours predictive of obesity: physical activity and eating.…”

“…BIGGER-PICTURE THINKING FOR BEHAVIOUR CHANGE 5 (Vasquez & Buehler, 2007) and to actually engage in a behaviour (Libby, Shaeffer, Eibach, & Slemmer, 2007;Rennie, Harris & Webb, 2016) when it has been previously visualised from a third-person perspective compared to a first-person perspective. With the first-person perspective, the individual sees the event from their own perspective, exactly as if they were actually experiencing the event.…”

“…For example, Vasquez and Buehler (2007) found that participants who used the third-person perspective to imagine themselves studying subsequently described what they visualised in a more abstract, decontextualised, and meaningful way (e.g., "being the best I can be"). This more abstract understanding of the visualized behaviour subsequently translated into increased motivation to study.…”

(Too) optimistic about optimism: The belief that optimism improves performance.

“…Future research could explore different ways of manipulating optimism and 57 OPTIMISTIC ABOUT OPTIMISM different types of optimism. Maybe prompting participants to visualize their success or failure (e.g., Taylor, Pham, Rivkin, & Armor, 1998;Vasquez & Buehler, 2007) would be another effective way to manipulate optimism.…”