The Interplay Between Goal Intentions and Implementation Intentions

By P. Sheeran, Thomas Llewelyn Webb, Peter M. Gollwitzer. Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin, 2005

625 citations recorded by the source corpus.

Two studies tested whether action control by implementation intentions is sensitive to the activation and strength of participants’ underlying goal intentions. In Study 1, participants formed implementation intentions (or did not) and their goal intentions were measured. Findings revealed a significant interaction between implementation intentions and the strength of respective goal intentions. Implementation intentions benefited the rate of goal attainment when participants had strong goal intentions but not when goal intentions were weak. Study 2 activated either a task-relevant or a neutral goal outside of participants’ conscious awareness and found that implementation intentions affected performance only when the relevant goal had been activated. These findings indicate that the rate of goal attainment engendered by implementation intentions takes account of the state (strength, activation) of people’s superordinate goal intentions.

Subfields: Applied Psychology, Social Psychology, Sociology and Political Science

View Paper: https://www.semanticscholar.org/paper/0c2460574bdf585f811f118d2ee3dcc39ffdf2bc

How researchers see this paper

The researchers whose trusted networks rank it highest, strongest advocate first. Every researcher gets a different order.

In Applied Psychology

1. Peter M. Gollwitzer
2. Benjamin Gardner
3. Wendy Wood
4. Phillippa Lally
5. G. Oettingen
6. P. Sheeran
7. Bas Verplanken
8. Anja Achtziger

In Social Psychology

1. Peter M. Gollwitzer
2. G. Oettingen
3. Anja Achtziger
4. Ute C. Bayer
5. P. Sheeran
6. Benjamin Gardner
7. M. van Gelderen
8. Teemu Kautonen

In Sociology and Political Science

1. Peter M. Gollwitzer
2. Phillippa Lally
3. Benjamin Gardner
4. G. Oettingen
5. Wendy Wood
6. Anja Achtziger
7. Ute C. Bayer
8. Teemu Kautonen

Citations in the corpus

• Self‐regulation strategies improve self‐discipline in adolescents: benefits of mental contrasting and implementation intentions (2011, background): “Since implementation intentions are not effective in the absence of goal commitment (Sheeran et al., 2005), we expect that both components of the intervention contributed to its effectiveness.”
• Implementation intentions in the entrepreneurial process: concept, empirical findings, and research agenda (2018, background): “Those without any level of interest in starting a business in the next 6 months were also excluded, because implementation intentions are only likely to be effective among participants who have set a relevant goal (Gollwitzer and Oettingen 2015; Sheeran et al. 2005).”
• Boosting scholastic test scores by willpower: The role of implementation intentions (2007, background): “... the selection of critical samples known to suffer from chronic high cognitive load (e.g., schizophrenic patients, heroin addicts under withdrawal; Brandsta¨ tter et al., 2001, Studies 1 and 2). Finally, there is evidence that the effective operation of implementation intentions does not require ”
• Implementation intentions and goal achievement: A meta-analysis of effects and processes (2006, background): “If an unwanted behavior possesses features of automaticity, it should be especially diYcult to control (Aarts &Dijskterhuis, 2000a,b; Sheeran et al., 2005a; Verplanken & Aarts, 1999; Wood, Quinn, & Kashy, 2002).”
• Strategies of setting and implementing goals: Mental contrasting and implementation intentions (2010, background): “For implementation intentions to be effective, strong goal commitments must be in place (Sheeran et al., 2005, Study 1), and mental contrasting creates such strpng commitments.”
• Self-regulation of consumer decision making and behavior: The role of implementation intentions (2009, positive): “For example, in a Puzzle Task Study on the goaldependence of implementation intentions (Sheeran et al., 2005; Study 2), implementation intentions that specified how to be fast in solving the puzzles did not lead to faster responses when the goal to be accurate rather than fast was activated.”
• Purchase and Consumption Habits: Not Necessarily What You Intend (2007, background): “According to Sheeran et al. (2005) , “the term ‘strategic’ captures an important feature of the automaticity in implementation intentions that is different to the automaticity associated with habits” (p. 96).”