When competing as an amateur swimmer, coaches would often advise us to envision the race we wanted to swim in the belief that seeing ourselves succeed in our minds would condition us to do well in the race.  It’s an approach that has received widespread acceptance in not only the sporting world but in other uncertain environments, such as public speaking or job interviews.

New research from the Kellogg School suggests that it’s an approach that does have limitations, however, and that envisioning ourselves in happier times is insufficient to drag ourselves out of the doldrums.  Indeed, the study suggests it may even have the opposite effect.

“The more you try to imagine yourself engaging in a positive activity when you are experiencing a negative mood, the less likely you are to want to engage in that enjoyable activity,” the researchers explain.

Cognitive divergence

Their explanation is that our brain struggles to reconcile the positive thoughts we’re engaging in with the mental and physical experience linked to our bad mood.  They argue that the brain tends to lean towards things that are easy to process, which as imagining a nice experience during difficult times may be hard can ensure the brain doesn’t want to play ball.

The researchers explain that nearly half of those they spoke to for their research engaged in this tactic to try and improve their mood.  The volunteers were then split into either a bad-mood group or a neutral-mood group, with the bad-mood group asked to write about something that made them sad, whereas the neutral group were asked to write about a typical day.  They then had to rate how they felt on a six-point scale.

They were then shown a couple of advertisements, one of which depicted a quiet coffee shop, and the other a lively party in a bar.  Both adverts contained language that encouraged viewers to imagine themselves there.  Each participant was asked to rate how easy it was to imagine themselves in their scenario and whether they preferred the bar or the cafe.

Led by our mood

The results suggest that when we’re in a bad mood, we tend to find enjoyable activities much harder to imagine, which then makes us less inclined to partake in such activities.

“When we are in a bad mood, it is difficult to simulate the experience of doing something enjoyable—and we attribute the difficulty of simulating to the enjoyable activity itself,” the researchers explain. “It doesn’t feel right anymore, and then we become more likely to avoid that activity.”

The researchers hypothesize that our expressions and emotions operate in tandem, such that our moods shape our facial expressions, and vice versa.  They suggest that this might also be true when we’re in a bad mood and try and imagine a fun activity.  The brain struggles to pair the two, which thus makes the activity seem less appealing.

They reason, therefore, that it might be possible to short-circuit this process by encouraging those with a bad mood to also smile as they imagine the fun activity.  This might render the imagining as less strange.

This was confirmed in an experiment in which volunteers placed a biscuit in their mouth to manipulate a smile.  Those people were able to break the association between mood and actions and were thus able to actively engage in the enjoyable activity.

Focusing on the outcome

Lastly, the researchers tested to see if our preference for enjoyable activities improves if we focus on the outcome of the activity rather than the actual processes involved.

“The literature had shown that there is a difference between trying to simulate the process of engaging in something, which usually feels more difficult, and simulating the outcome,” the researchers explain.

Across another experiment, it emerged that people who were asked to think about the process of singing two tunes tended to prefer the sadder tune, whereas those who thought about the outcome chose the happier tune.

So perhaps the conclusion from the research is that it’s better to actually do an activity than to imagine doing them, which may be scant consolation during a pandemic in which so many activities have been restricted.