Excerpt from “59 seconds: Think a little, change a lot” by Richard Wiseman

In one study, conducted by Lien Pham and Shelley Taylor at the University of California, a group of students was asked to spend a few moments each day visualizing themselves getting a high grade on an important midterm exam that would take place in a few days’ time. 1 They were asked to form a clear image in their mind’s eye and imagine how great it would feel to make a high grade. The study also involved a control group of students, who went about their business as usual and were not asked to visualize doing especially well on the exams. The experimenters asked the students in both groups to make a note of the number of hours they studied each day, and monitored their final grades. Even though the daydreaming exercise lasted only a few minutes, it had a significant impact on the students’ behavior, causing them to study less and make lower grades on the exam. The exercise may have made them feel better about themselves, but it did not help them achieve their goals.

In another experiment, Gabriele Oettingen and Thomas Wadden, at the University of Pennsylvania, followed a group of obese women taking part in a weight-reduction program. 2 During the work, the women were asked to imagine how they might behave in various food-related scenarios, such as going to a friend’s house and being tempted with tasty pizza. Each of their responses was categorized on a scale ranging from highly positive (with, for example, someone stating, “I would be a good person and stay well away from the cakes and ice cream”) to highly negative (“I would be straight in there, consuming both my own and other people’s portions”). After the women were tracked for a year, the results revealed that those with more positive fantasies had lost, on average, twenty-six pounds less than those with negative fantasies.

The author recommends a “doublethink” approach instead, where you visualise both the positive outcomes and the negative ones, asking questions like what your plan of action would be on failure while simultaneously thinking about the benefits of success.