Journal Article

Functional imagery training: tackling impulsivity by strengthening motivation

Andrade, Jackie

2025

Overview

Jackie Andrade is a professor of psychology at the University of Plymouth. She has been researching the role of imagery and memory in clinical issues for over 30 years, with around 150 publications on topics ranging from obesity and addiction to post-traumatic stress disorder and awareness in anaesthesia. She is known for her theoretical work on drug and food cravings, supported by extensive laboratory and field research, and for co-developing functional imagery training for health behaviour change.Theories of motivation often pit ‘willpower’ against ‘temptation’, with impulsivity viewed as a habitual lack of willpower. I shall argue that these concepts can be better explained in a single cognitive theory. In the Affective Imagery Theory of Motivation (AIToM), emotionally charged mental imagery drives behaviour towards short-term and long-term goals, including those associated with cravings and temptations. When goals conflict, behaviour selection involves a competition between the relative affective strength of competing motivations at that moment, a competition that familiar short-term rewards often win because they are easier to imagine vividly.I shall present evidence consistent with AIToM, including psychometric and experimental evidence that Drug cravings and other temptations involve imagery and are weakened by concurrent cognitive loads.Motivation for long-term goals also involves imagery and fluctuates according to competing motivations.Functional imagery training (FIT) uses these ideas to strengthen motivation by incorporating personalised mental imagery training into motivational interviewing. Goal imagery is used to strengthen motivation, and steps imagery is used to develop an action plan and build confidence to enact it. Clients are encouraged to practice a combined steps-to-goal image by pairing imagery with behavioural cues that serve as reminders. The aim is to build a habit of focusing on goal imagery at decision pointsIn a randomised controlled trial on weight loss, FIT performed substantially better than motivational interviewing. Participants lost 4.5kg after 4h of FIT spread over 6 months and continued to lose another 2kg on average in the next 6 months unsupported. Participants receiving time-matched motivational interviewing lost under 1kg in the same 12m period. FIT has also outperformed waitlist and active controls in studies of anxiety, resilience, and athletic performance.In conclusion, we can reduce impulsivity and strengthen ‘willpower’ by eliciting personal goal imagery and training the ability to shift attention away from temptation imagery towards this goal imagery. Functional imagery training is a brief transdiagnostic intervention that does this.

• Publisher: BMJ Publishing Group LTD
• Subject: Impulsivity / Motivation