Mental contrasting with
implementation intentions (MCII)

Mental contrasting

Mental contrasting involves alternating positive thoughts about the future benefits of achieving your goals with more pragmatic (or even pessimistic) thoughts about the current reality and the effort involved in the process of achieving those goals.

Positive goal-oriented thoughts

• How will you or others benefit if you achieve these goals?

• What will it feel like? How will you feel about yourself or others? How will they feel about you?

• What will change as a result (new opportunities made available or existing threats removed)?

Pragmatic process-oriented thoughts

• What will it take to get to the goal from your current reality (what will be the cost)?

• What challenges, obstacles or objections might you face on the way and how will they make you feel?

• What signs would you notice that your motivation is draining?

Implementation intentions

When you have identified any potential challenge, obstacle or objections that might get in the way of you achieving your goals, you can develop mini-plans to anticipate how you will deal with them if and when they arise (see scenario planning).

Implementation intentions take the form of 'if…then…' statements (If X happens, then I will try Y).

Duckworth, A. L., Kirby, T., Gollwitzer, A., & Oettingen, G. (2013). From fantasy to action: mental contrasting with implementation intentions (MCII) improves academic performance in children. Social Psychological and Personality Science, 4(6), 745–753. https://doi.org/10.1177/1948550613476307

Wang, G., Wang, Y., & Gai, X. (2021). A meta-analysis of the effects of mental contrasting with implementation intentions on goal attainment. Frontiers in Psychology, 12. https://doi.org/10.3389/fpsyg.2021.565202