PSY 3109 Lecture Notes - Lecture 13: Positive Illusions
Deliberative and Implemental Mindsets: Cognitive Tuning Toward Congruous
Thought and Information
Read Experiment 2
Gollwitzer 4 stages:
1. Predecisional- where potential action goals entailed by a persons many
wants and wishes are deliberated
▪ Peoples task is to choose between action goals suggested by their
wants and their wishes
2. Post-decisional- where the individual becomes concerned with
implementing the chosen goal
3. Actional- starts when actions geared toward achieving the chosen goal begin
4. Post-actional- the individual proceeds to evaluate the achieved outcome
• As a person is in each phase, a particular mode of thinking, or mindset, is set
up to help facilitate the aims of that phase.
• Know the difference between the two mindsets from different people
Experiments show that we are good at paying attention to information that is valuable to
use and filtering out information that is not
Zeigarnik and colleagues found that when people are interrupted prior to completing a
task, they show better memory for task-related information than immediately after
completing the task
The benefit of mentally concretizing ones goals is consistent with several decades of
research by organizational psychologists Locke and Latham
A main finding of their research is that when employers who provide concrete (e.g.,
numeric) goals to their employees, these employees vastly outperform employees who are
told simply to do your best
The downside of implementation intentions is that they make a person more vulnerable to
positive illusions (an unrealistically positive outlook for the future)
A deliberative mindset should, for instance, entail procedures of weighing pros and cons,
whereas an implemental mindset should entail procedures of timing and sequencing of
goal-oriented actions
Experiment 1:
• Congruent vs. Incongruent
• Mindset congruency hypothesis: implies that deliberative efforts (ex.
contemplating possible goals) are most frequently ascribed to the main characters
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Document Summary
Deliberative and implemental mindsets: cognitive tuning toward congruous. Experiments show that we are good at paying attention to information that is valuable to use and filtering out information that is not. Zeigarnik and colleagues found that when people are interrupted prior to completing a task, they show better memory for task-related information than immediately after completing the task. The benefit of mentally concretizing one(cid:495)s goals is consistent with several decades of told simply to (cid:494)do your best(cid:495) research by organizational psychologists locke and latham. A main finding of their research is that when employers who provide concrete (e. g. , numeric) goals to their employees, these employees vastly outperform employees who are. The downside of implementation intentions is that they make a person more vulnerable to positive illusions (an unrealistically positive outlook for the future) A deliberative mindset should, for instance, entail procedures of weighing pros and cons, whereas an implemental mindset should entail procedures of timing and sequencing of goal-oriented actions.