Category: Motivation

The key to eating healthily, reducing alcohol consumption and exercising more.

Visualisation is the psychological key to getting more exercise and improving diet, research finds.

Visualising eating healthily, reducing alcohol consumption and exercising more all help people change their behaviour.

The more people visualise the necessary behaviours, the more motivated they become to change.

Professor Martin Hagger, study co-author, said:

“There are strong links between chronic illnesses like heart disease and diabetes and behaviour, and imagery-based interventions offer an inexpensive, effective way of promoting healthy behaviours such as physical activity and healthy eating.

We found that people who simply visualised the steps necessary to do the healthy behaviour on a regular basis were more likely to be motivated, and actually do, the healthy behaviour.”

The researchers synthesised the results of 26 different studies to test the optimum circumstances for visualisation.

They revealed that imagery worked better when:

• People were given text message reminders,
• the visualisation lasted longer,
• and they had detailed instructions.

Professor Hagger said:

“Previous studies have shown that imagery interventions have been used in various contexts including enhancing athletes’ performance, flight simulation training for aircraft pilots and for symptom relief in hospital settings.

Our research shows that imagery is also effective for promoting participation in healthy behaviours.

Our findings may not only be of interest to health professionals around the world, but could be of interest and potentially implemented within other industries.”

The study was published in the journal Health Psychology (Conroy & Hagger, 2018).

The thought made people more confident and boosted their performance.

Imagining a clear picture of a successful future can help motivate people to succeed, research finds.

Looking to the future — and focusing on a positive future identity — helps people deal with everyday stressful situations.

For the study, students from vulnerable backgrounds wrote about either their past or future successes.

Those who imagined positive futures were more motivated to take action.

They also displayed more confident body language in a mock interview and better performance in an academic test.

The effects were particularly beneficial for female students.

Dr Mesmin Destin, the study’s first author, said:

“The theory of identity-based motivation proposes that activating a focus on a successful future identity may be especially powerful in motivating students who are vulnerable during challenging academic situations to develop a sense of action readiness.

This involves feeling ready and able to take appropriate action when confronting difficulty.”

For the study, hundreds of students were given a mock interview after writing about their past or future success.

They were then given a difficult academic test.

Researchers looked at body language and the amount of effort students put into the test.

Dr Destin said:

“Activating imagined successful future identities appears to provide a potential pathway to enable vulnerable students to effectively navigate everyday stressors.

The findings therefore suggest that certain students may benefit from strategies that remind them to visualize their successful futures prior to any difficult and important task that they might otherwise be likely to avoid.”

The study was published in the journal Motivation and Emotion (Destin et al., 2018).

Fruits and vegetables boost happiness even quicker than health.

Eating 8 portions of fruit and vegetables a day provides the maximum boost to people’s happiness, a study finds.

The positive effect comes faster than the boost to health.

Up to 8 portions, the more portions people ate, the happier they were.

The effect on happiness of eating those 8 portions compared with none was dramatic.

In terms of life satisfaction, it was equivalent to the difference between being employed and unemployed.

The graph below shows the increase in life satisfaction with portions of fruit and vegetables consumed each day.

Graph courtesy of Mujcic & Oswald (2016)

It is the first time a large study has found that fruit and vegetables contribute to happiness on top of their well-known protective effect against cancer and heart disease.

Professor Andrew Oswald, one of the study’s authors, said:

“Eating fruit and vegetables apparently boosts our happiness far more quickly than it improves human health.

People’s motivation to eat healthy food is weakened by the fact that physical-health benefits, such as protecting against cancer, accrue decades later.

However, well-being improvements from increased consumption of fruit and vegetables are closer to immediate.”

The conclusions come from following over 12,000 people.

Participants kept food diaries and their psychological well-being was measured.

Within two years, those eating more fruits and vegetables felt better, the results showed.

Dr Redzo Mujcic, one of the study’s authors, said:

“Perhaps our results will be more effective than traditional messages in convincing people to have a healthy diet.

There is a psychological payoff now from fruit and vegetables — not just a lower health risk decades later.”

One possible mechanism by which fruit and vegetables affect happiness is through antioxidants.

There is a suggested connection between antioxidants and optimism.

And, if you need more encouragement:

• Eating More Vegetables Linked To 40% Better Memory

The study was published in the American Journal of Public Health (Mujcic & Oswald, 2016).

Attendance at fitness classes was 90% higher in the group that used this type of motivation.

Competition is one of the best motivators, a new study concludes.

It works much better than friendly support, which could actually backfire and reduce motivation, the researchers found.

The research involved college students being encouraged to attend classes at the University fitness centre.

The programme was managed through an internet-based social network.

The researchers tested the effects of four different types of social network interactions, some involving competition, others not.

The results showed that when competition was involved, attendance rates at fitness classes were 90% higher.

Dr Damon Centola, one of the study’s authors, said:

“Most people think that when it comes to social media more is better.

This study shows that isn’t true: When social media is used the wrong way, adding social support to an online health program can backfire and make people less likely to choose healthy behaviors.

However, when done right, we found that social media can increase people’s fitness dramatically.”

Whether it was individual or in groups — competition emerged as critical to motivation.

Dr Jingwen Zhang, the study’s first author, said:

“Framing the social interaction as a competition can create positive social norms for exercising.

Social support can make people more dependent on receiving messages, which can change the focus of the program.”

Dr Centola speculated on why social support may not have worked:

“Supportive groups can backfire because they draw attention to members who are less active, which can create a downward spiral of participation.

Competitive groups frame relationships in terms of goal-setting by the most active members.

These relationships help to motivate exercise because they give people higher expectations for their own levels of performance.”

In comparison, competition kept people pushing for more:

“In a competitive setting, each person’s activity raises the bar for everyone else.

Social support is the opposite: a ratcheting-down can happen.

If people stop exercising, it gives permission for others to stop, too, and the whole thing can unravel fairly quickly.”

The study was published in the journal Preventive Medicine Reports (Zhang et al., 2016).