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Expectation, fantasy, and weight loss: Is the impact of positive thinking always positive?
Abstract
We investigated the impact of expectation and fantasy on the weight losses of 25 obese women participating in a behavioral weight reduction program. Both expectations of reaching one's goal weight and spontaneous weight-related fantasies were measured at pretreatment before subjects began 1 year of weekly group-treatment. Consistent with our hypothesis that expectation and fantasy are different in quality, these variables predicted weight change in opposite directions. Optimistic expectations but negative fantasies favored weight loss. Subjects who displayed pessimistic expectations combined with positive fantasies had the poorest treatment outcome. Finally, expectation but not fantasy predicted program attendance. The effects of fantasy are discussed with regard to their potential impact on weight reduction therapy and the need for further studies of dieters' spontaneous thoughts and images.
... Similarly, Conner et al. (2006) found that preexperiencing higher levels of regret in the context of goal failure predicted a weaker intention to smoke (for a meta-analysis see Rivis et al., 2009). However, some studies could not document an enhancing impact of affective EFT (e.g., Oettingen & Wadden, 1991;Pham & Taylor, 1999) or even found a negative influence on goal-directed behavior (Kappes et al., 2012). In sum, empirical evidence speaks in favor of the idea that preexperiencing affective consequences of an upcoming event (affective EFT) can increase adults' motivation to bring about a certain outcome of an upcoming event thereby facilitating future-oriented behavior. ...
... In sum, empirical evidence speaks in favor of the idea that preexperiencing affective consequences of an upcoming event (affective EFT) can increase adults' motivation to bring about a certain outcome of an upcoming event thereby facilitating future-oriented behavior. Although contradictory findings are the exception (e.g., Oettingen & Wadden, 1991;Pham & Taylor, 1999), they point to the importance of investigating the mechanisms and moderators of this relation. For example, the somewhat contradictory evidence may point to the possibility that the impact of affective EFT depends on several conditions, for example, that some individuals may benefit from affective EFT more than others. ...
... It also contradicts empirical findings showing that anticipated pleasure enhances behavioral intentions and increases engagement in imagined everyday activities (Ji et al., 2021;Renner et al., 2019). However, our results line up with previous empirical studies that found no beneficial influence of positive future thoughts or even found a negative effect (Kappes et al., 2012;Oettingen & Wadden, 1991;Pham & Taylor, 1999). In those studies, as in the present one, positive future-related thoughts (e.g., passing a test) focused on a desired outcome. ...
Envisioning the future and how you may feel (affective episodic future thinking [EFT]) helps adults to act in favor for their future self, according to manifold experiments. The current study tested whether and how affective EFT also helps children to behave more proactively, that is, to self-initially prepare for an upcoming event. Five-year-old (N = 90) children (data collected from 2021 to 2022) were instructed to mentally imagine how they would feel after successfully managing an upcoming test (positive affective EFT), how they would feel after failing to do so (negative affective EFT), or they were reminded of an upcoming test without a prompt to imagine (control condition, random assignment). Proactive behavior was indicated by children’s choice to play one of three games before the actual test (one of the games was announced to be the test game). Mechanisms (e.g., motivation to win, psychological distance, current affect) and moderators (ability of episodically thinking about the future in everyday life, behavioral inhibition, and behavioral approach) for the possible effects of affective EFT were explored. Children in the negative affective EFT condition chose the target game significantly above chance level and more often than children in the control group, whereas children in the positive affective EFT condition did not. This effect was independent of the assumed mediators and moderators. Findings are discussed in the context of the theoretical and empirical literature on affective EFT in adults and suggestions for future studies are given.
... Although the two forms of future thinking appear to overlap, they are distinct concepts. Expectations and fantasies were found to be only weakly or moderately correlated (e.g., r = 0.09-0.24 in Kappes et al.; r = 0.21-0.37 in Oettingen and Mayer; r = 0.45 in Oettingen and Wadden) [14,18,25]. More importantly, they predict behaviors and future outcomes in opposite directions. ...
Background
Previous research on COVID-19 vaccination highlights future thoughts associated with possible Coronavirus infection and vaccine side effects as key predictors of vaccine hesitancy. Yet, research has focused on independent contributions of such future thoughts, neglecting their interactive aspects.
Purpose
We examined whether thoughts about two possible COVID-related futures (suffering from COVID-19 and vaccine side effects) interactively predict vaccine hesitancy and vaccination behavior among unvaccinated and vaccinated people. Importantly, we compared two forms of future thinking: beliefs or expectations (likelihood judgments) versus fantasies (free thoughts and images describing future events).
Methods
In Study 1, we conducted a longitudinal study with an unvaccinated group (N = 210). We assessed expectations versus fantasies about the two COVID-related futures as predictors. As outcome variables, we measured vaccine hesitancy, and 9 weeks later we assessed information seeking and vaccine uptake. Study 2 was a cross-sectional study comparing vaccine hesitancy of an unvaccinated group (N = 307) to that of a vaccinated group (N = 311).
Results
Study 1 found that more negative fantasies about COVID-19 impact and less negative fantasies about vaccine side effects interactively predicted lower vaccine hesitancy and more vaccine-related behaviors among unvaccinated people; no such interaction was observed between respective expectations. Study 2 replicated these results of Study 1. Additionally, for vaccinated people, low expectations of negative COVID-19 impact and high expectations of negative vaccine impact interactively predicted higher vaccine hesitancy, whereas no such interaction was observed for respective fantasies.
Conclusions
Research on vaccine hesitancy should explore interactions between future thinking about disease and about vaccine side effects. Importantly, there is much to be gained by distinguishing expectations versus fantasies: vaccination interventions aiming to boost vaccine uptake among unvaccinated people should tap into their negative future fantasies regarding both disease and vaccine side effects.
... In a study, Oettingen and Wadden (1991) investigated the impact of expectations and fantasies in a one-year behavioral weight reduction program. They found that these variables predicted weight change in opposite directions. ...
Perception is said to have assertoric force: It inclines the perceiver to believe its content. In contrast, perceptual imagination is commonly taken to be non-assertoric: Imagining winning a piano contest does not incline the imaginer to believe they actually won. However, abundant evidence from clinical and experimental psychology shows that imagination influences attitudes and behavior in ways similar to perceptual experiences. To account for these phenomena, I propose that perceptual imaginings have implicit assertoric force and put forth a theory—the Prima Facie View—as a unified explanation for the empirical findings reviewed. According to this view, mental images are treated as percepts in operations involving associative memory. Finally, I address alternative explanations that could account for the reviewed empirical evidence—such as a Spinozian model of belief formation or Gendler’s notion of alief—as well as potential objections to the Prima Facie View.
... Empirical studies support the idea that correctly constrained imaginings can sustain our motivation to reach towards the envisaged goal, while improperly constrained imaginings ('mere fantasies') have no effect on motivation. In four studies, Oettingen et al. (1991;, Kappes et Oettingen (2011) and Kappes et al. (2012) have ...
Both lay people and philosophers assume that hoping for something implies imagining it. According to contemporary philosophical accounts of hope, hope involves an element of imagination as input, part, or output of hope. However, there is no systematic view of the interaction between hope and the different processes constituting imagination. In this paper we put forward a view of (i) the kind of imaginings typically triggered by hopeful states, (ii) the nature of the interaction between hope and hopeful imaginings, and (iii) the epistemic value of imagining out of hope. We argue that a paradigmatic output of hope is an immersive kind of cognitive imagination. Additionally, justified hopes constrain our immersive imaginings in such a way as to provide them with a specific epistemic value. Hopeful imaginings are not mere fantasies or wishful thinking; they constitute valuable experiences we can learn from and rely on in planning our future.
... A second set of studies offers some tentative support for the thesis that long-term maintenance may be undermined by expectations that are overly optimistic. For example, Oettingen and Wadden (1991) reported that women who initially held exceedingly optimistic fantasies about what their life would be like if they lost weight subsequently had less success in a 12-month weight treatment program. More recently, Sbrocco, Nedegaard, Stone, and Lewis (1999) found mat women enrolled in a weight control program that emphasized modest treatment goals lost less weight during treatment compared to those in a traditional behavior therapy, but that at 12 months post-treatment these women had, in fact, lost more weight than those who had participated in the traditional program. ...
Intervention strategies that can produce successful rates of long-term behavior change have proven elusive and indicate the need for new approaches to this vexing problem. However, the development of new intervention strategies is constrained by our current conceptualization of behavioral maintenance. This article reviews how the dominant models of health behavior change have operationalized the psychological processes that guide the initiation and maintenance of a new pattern of behavior. In light of this review, an alternative framework is proposed based on the premise that the decision criteria that lead people to initiate a change in their behavior are different from those that lead them to maintain that behavior. Decisions regarding behavioral initiation are predicted to depend on favorable expectations regarding future outcomes, whereas decisions regarding behavioral maintenance are predicted to depend on perceived satisfaction with received outcomes. The implications of this framework for behavioral interventions are addressed.
Behandlungsmanual und Behandlungsmaterialien für die psychologische Kurzintervention zur Erwartungsoptimierung von Patienten vor herzchirurgischen Eingriffen im Rahmen der randomisiert-kontrollierten mulitzentrischen PSY-HEART-II-Studie.
Health-related social media increasingly competes with other forms of health communication for public attention. To advance understanding of the genesis of health-related social media communicating extreme fitness standards, we investigated women's creation of fitspiration, social-media content combining fitness images with effortful messages. In a pre-registered study, we hypothesized that creating extreme fitspiration content would relate positively to fitness fantasizing and to exercise self-efficacy, fitness perfectionism, physical activity, thin- and muscular-ideal internalizations, and self-objectification. Undergraduate women (N = 277) created their own fitspiration content by selecting from fitness images and messages that varied in extremity. Fitness fantasizing related positively to creating more extreme fitspiration. When controlling statistically for all other individual-difference variables, exercise self-efficacy and perfectionistic strivings emerged as key variables associated with creating extreme fitspiration content. Results suggest that women who are confident and strive toward challenging goals may create fitspiration content that communicates extreme standards. This work has implications for understanding a potential disconnect between fitspiration creators and consumers, which may illuminate ways to promote healthy fitness communications online.
This study's purpose is to evaluate the effectiveness of anticipatory coping as a possible mechanism to reduce daily self-reported physical health consequences of forecasting election-related stress. Elections are often stressful for people. However, the research on possible physical consequences of anticipated election-related stress and ways to counter its impact is limited. We used data from the 2018 U.S. Midterm Election Stress Coping and Prevention Every Day (ESCAPED) study, which provided daily diary responses from 140 participants across the U.S. and American Samoa, ages 19-86. Participants were recruited using Amazon's Mechanical Turk (mTurk) and were asked to fill out an online survey each day for 22 days before, the day of, and 7 days after the 2018 U.S. midterm election, which fell on November 6, 2018. Questions involved forecasting election-related stress, four forms of anticipatory coping, and daily self-reported physical health. Results from multilevel models suggested that on days when participants experienced an increase in their forecasting of election-related stressors and also experienced a decrease in their anticipatory coping related to problem analysis, their daily self-reported physical health decreased. These results highlight the role that future-oriented tactics could play in managing the physical consequences of election-related stress.
Previous studies have shown that people who have not been victimized by negative life events tend to perceive themselves as less vulnerable than others to victimization. The present 2 studies examined the conditions under which Ss' judgments of others' vulnerability would differ from judgments of their own vulnerability. In Study 1, 101 undergraduates saw vague comparison targets (either the average person or the average college student) as more vulnerable than themselves to 10 negative events. In contrast, Ss perceived a specific target (their closest friend, sibling, or same-sex parent) as equally invulnerable as themselves. In Study 2, 190 Ss who were instructed to consider a vague, abstract target (either the average college student or one of their friends) made downward comparisons, choosing a real or hypothetical other who was especially vulnerable to a particular event. Ss who were instructed to consider a specific, concrete target (their closest friend) perceived no self–other differences in risk status. It is concluded that when given the opportunity, Ss actively engage in downward comparisons, thereby seeing themselves as relatively invulnerable. Whereas vague targets facilitate downward comparisons, specific targets make such comparisons more difficult. Both cognitive and motivational mechanisms underlying such downward comparisons are discussed. (29 ref) (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2012 APA, all rights reserved)
Conducted a series of 6 studies involving 631 adults to elucidate the "illusion of control" phenomenon, defined as an expectancy of a personal success probability inappropriately higher than the objective probability would warrant. It was predicted that factors from skill situations (competition, choice, familiarity, involvement) introduced into chance situations would cause Ss to feel inappropriately confident. In Study 1 Ss cut cards against either a confident or a nervous competitor; in Study 2 lottery participants were or were not given a choice of ticket; in Study 3 lottery participants were or were not given a choice of either familiar or unfamiliar lottery tickets; in Study 4, Ss in a novel chance game either had or did not have practice and responded either by themselves or by proxy; in Study 5 lottery participants at a racetrack were asked their confidence at different times; finally, in Study 6 lottery participants either received a single 3-digit ticket or 1 digit on each of 3 days. Indicators of confidence in all 6 studies supported the prediction. (38 ref) (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2012 APA, all rights reserved)
This article explores the implications that dispositional optimism holds for physical well-being. Research is reviewed that links optimism to a number of different positive health-relevant outcomes, ranging from the development of physical symptoms to recovery from coronary artery bypass surgery. Additional findings are described which suggest that these beneficial effects are partly due to differences between optimists and pessimists in the strategies that they use to cope with stress. A number of other potential mediators are also discussed, including some that are physiologic in nature. The article closes with a discussion of the relationships between our own theoretical account of the effects of optimism and several other conceptual approaches.
Three investigations are reported that examined the relation between self-appraisals and appraisals of others. In Experiment 1, subjects rated a series of valenced trait adjectives according to how well the traits described the self and others. Individuals displayed a pronounced “self-other bias,” such that positive attributes were rated as more descriptive of self than of others, whereas negative attributes were rated as less descriptive of self than of others. Furthermore, in contrast to C. R. Rogers's (1951) assertion that high self-esteem is associated with a comparable regard for others, the tendency for individuals to evaluate the self in more favorable terms than they evaluated people in general was particularly pronounced among those with high self-esteem. These findings were replicated and extended in Experiment 2, where it also was found that self-evaluations were more favorable than were evaluations of a friend and that individuals with high self-esteem were most likely to appraise their friend...
The utility and validity of Bandura's self-efficacy construct was evaluated in a study involving 62 volunteer overweight women. Pretreatment, posttreatment, and follow-up assessments of self-efficacy and weight loss were obtained in the context of a behaviorally oriented weight-reduction program. It was predicted that (a) weight loss would be related to enhancement in personal efficacy, (b) posttreatment efficacy would be a significant and more accurate predictor of weight loss during follow-up intervals than posttreatment weight loss, and (c) self-efficacy would be related to attrition whereas weight loss would not. Results indicate a significant relationship between weight change and personal efficacy during the follow-up intervals. In accord with Bandura's theory, efficacy expectations predicted outcome during the 6-week and 6-month follow-up intervals, whereas posttreatment weight loss was unrelated to later outcome. In addition, completers had a substantially higher level of personal efficacy than dropouts over treatment and, to a lesser extent, over the follow-up period. Some procedural considerations regarding the assessment of personal efficacy are raised, and the relationship between the cognitively based constructs of goal choice and self-efficacy and task performance are discussed. Finally, given the nature and variability of weight-reduction efforts and the overall time span of the study, it is concluded that results attest to the validity and utility of the self-efficacy construct in predicting behavioral persistence and level of behavioral change.
The primary primary purpose of this study was to evaluate the therapeutic efficacy of a cognitive, a behavioral, and a combined cognitive-behavioral approach to weight reduction and maintenance. A nutrition-exercise group served as a minimal treatment control condition. Each of the four groups contained 15 health, obese (10% above ideal body weight) females recruited from the community. Subjects were matched and assigned to groups according to age (M = 37.87 years) and percentage overweight (M = 66%). The weight-reduction program was divided into an 8-week treatment phase, followed by a 1-year maintenance phase. At posttreatment, weight loss for the behavioral group (M = 4.74 kg) was significantly better than that of the control group (M = 2.345 kg). The combined group lost more weight (M = 4.58 kg) than the control group, a difference that was marginally significant. The cognitive group was the only condition that showed a continuing decrease in weight. However, there were no significant differences between the four groups during follow-up.
Following from Bandura's (1977a) self-efficacy theory, an Eating Self-Efficacy Scale (ESES) was developed and its psychometric properties established. Factor analysis of the 25-item scale yielded two reliable factors—one concerned with eating when experiencing negative affect (NA) and the other with eating during socially acceptable circumstances (SAC). The ESES demonstrated good internal consistency, test-retest reliability, and convergent validity. A clinical study using this measure found that increases in ESES scores were significantly related to weight losses among weight loss program participants. A laboratory study using a mood induction procedure found that NA subscale scores predicted food consumption irrespective of whether negative affect was induced. This finding may indicate that people have difficulty accurately discriminating the specific circumstances under which their eating difficulties occur and/or that eating difficulties tend to be global in nature. The significant correlation of the two ESES subscales (r =.39, p .001) supports these possibilities. The clinical and research utility of the ESES and the implications of the findings are discussed.