G. H.E. Gendolla et al. (eds.), Handbook of Biobehavioral Approaches to Self-Regulation, DOI 10.1007/978-1-4939-1236-0_21, © Springer Science+Business Media New York 2015

present reality can be used as a self-regulation strategy leading to increased or decreased ener-gization, depending on people‘s expectations of realizing the desired future. Such selective effort mobilization assures that people mobilize enough resources when realizing a desired future is pos-sible and save their resources when realizing the future is impossible. Moreover, recent studies suggest that the energy mobilized by mental con-trasting the desired future of solving a given task may even be used to fuel effort in a task unrelated to the desired future targeted by mental contrast-ing. We will discuss these findings in relation to other models of physiological self-regulation, such as motivational intensity theory (Brehm and Self 1989; Gendolla et al. 2013), the biopsycho-social model of arousal (Blascovich and Tomaka 1996), and excitation transfer theory (Zillmann 1983). Finally, we will line out implications for designing interventions geared at improving peo-ples ’ self-regulation of effort. 21.1.1 Positive Fantasies About the Future Positive fantasies about the future are free thoughts and images about desired future events that appear in people’s stream of conscious-ness (Oettingen and Mayer 2002). The depicted events are independent of people’s experiences in their reality. A person who is very shy may, for example, envision herself giving a barnstorm-ing speech in front of an absorbed audience o