The impact of perspective in visualizing health-related behaviors: first-person perspective increases motivation to adopt health-related behaviors

Two experiments investigated the effects of perspective and visualization on motivation to engage in health-related behaviors. Participants visualized themselves donating blood (Experiment 1) or quitting smoking (Experiment 2) from either the first-person (own) or third-person (observer's) perspective. Subsequently, motivation to engage in the visualized behavior was assessed. Contrary to previous findings showing the benefits of taking a third-person perspective on behaviors not related to health, visualizing using the first-person perspective had greater effects on motivation than visualizing using the third-person perspective. Indeed, visualizing using the third-person perspective was no more effective than not visualizing anything (Experiment 2). The theoretical implications and potential applications of these findings are discussed.