Visualise Your First Step To Health

Main Category: Psychology / Psychiatry
Also Included In: Complementary Medicine / Alternative Medicine
Article Date: 04 Aug 2008 - 3:00 PDT

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Want to go to the gym but never even set off? The best first step might be to close your eyes and imagine yourself on the journey.

A new study, published today (4 August 2008) in the British Journal of Health Psychology, found that people who visualised themselves going through the actions involved in a specific health behaviour were then more likely to intend to carry out the behaviour.

In the first study of its kind, Christopher Armitage from the University of Sheffield and John Reidy from Sheffield Hallam University, looked at the effects of mental simulation on subsequent intentions, in this case, the intention to give blood. They found that people who were asked to visualise themselves going through the actions involved in giving blood - making an appointment, taking the route, preparing to donate - were subsequently more likely to intend to donate blood than people who did not do this visualisation, or only visualised the outcome.

Christopher Armitage said: 'Once people have a specific and fixed intention like going to a fitness class, or eating a healthy breakfast, then they're really likely to go through with it, so finding a way to help people to change or fix their intentions is a vital step in improving their health behaviour.

'There is evidence that shows that mental simulation may link thought and action. Our study suggests that closing your eyes and imagining the process you would go through to give blood, or carry out another health behaviour could take you one step closer to actually doing it.

'Each of the 146 participants in the study directed their own two minute long mental simulation after brief instructions, which also suggests that this process may be a quick way that people can successfully alter their own intentions and health behaviour,' Christopher Armitage concludes.

The British Psychological Society