A fascinating study by Ibrahim Senay at the University of Illinois may put a dent in the way self-help gurus instruct individuals on how to use self-referential communication. Most affirmations are framed in the positive, active voice that often starts, "I will..." You can fill in the blanks with whatever statement suits your individual interests.
Senay has shown that using "Will I?" as the beginning of self-talk actually increases motivation towards task completion more than statements such as "I will." The results are suggestive about motivational language in general, but even Senay says the effects should be studied more thoroughly.
In a separate study, William Hart and Dolores Albarracin, showed that using past imperfect verbs ("I was doing research in the area of") versus past perfect verbs ("I completed research in the area of") stimulated a stronger reenactment of those memories about activities and processes a person has learned which enabled a stronger use of them in considering future contexts.
I often use the metaphor of movie-making as a general metaphor for a great deal of mental activity in which communication plays a role. These two studies show how refined we are becoming at looking a the specifics of language in its larger roles of motivation and future planning. They both also show our commonly held biases may be less effective than we think.
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