Emerging Trends in The Social and Behavioral Sciences

Setting One's Mind on Action: Planning Out Goal Striving in Advance

Item

Title

Setting One's Mind on Action: Planning Out Goal Striving in Advance

Author

Gollwitzer, Peter M.

Research Area

Cognition and Emotions

Topic

Motivation

Abstract

Ineffective goal striving may be overcome using a simple self‐regulation strategy: preparing goal striving in advance by forming implementation intentions (i.e., making if‐then plans). This strategy helps to cope with the classic challenges to goal striving: getting started, staying on track, not overextending oneself, and disengaging from faulty means. Interestingly, these beneficial effects are observed no matter whether hindrances from within (e.g., ego depletion) or outside (e.g., social influence) the person are to be dealt with. In this essay, the processes on which the beneficial effects of implementation intentions are based will be discussed by pointing to relevant research using cognitive task paradigms and assessing brain data. Moreover, recent findings are reported demonstrating that implementation intentions can be used to curb reflexive cognitive, affective, and behavioral responses that interfere with a person's focal goal pursuit. In closing this essay, a behavior change intervention (i.e., mental contrasting with implementation intentions) is introduced that establishes the prerequisites for implementation intention effects to occur, and research areas in psychology are pointed to that could benefit from conducting implementation intention research.

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Identifier

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extracted text

Setting One’s Mind on Action:
Planning Out Goal Striving in
Advance
PETER M. GOLLWITZER

Abstract
Ineffective goal striving may be overcome using a simple self-regulation strategy:
preparing goal striving in advance by forming implementation intentions (i.e.,
making if-then plans). This strategy helps to cope with the classic challenges to
goal striving: getting started, staying on track, not overextending oneself, and
disengaging from faulty means. Interestingly, these beneficial effects are observed
no matter whether hindrances from within (e.g., ego depletion) or outside (e.g.,
social influence) the person are to be dealt with. In this essay, the processes on which
the beneficial effects of implementation intentions are based will be discussed by
pointing to relevant research using cognitive task paradigms and assessing brain
data. Moreover, recent findings are reported demonstrating that implementation
intentions can be used to curb reflexive cognitive, affective, and behavioral responses
that interfere with a person’s focal goal pursuit. In closing this essay, a behavior
change intervention (i.e., mental contrasting with implementation intentions) is
introduced that establishes the prerequisites for implementation intention effects
to occur, and research areas in psychology are pointed to that could benefit from
conducting implementation intention research.

SETTING ONE’S MIND ON ACTION: PLANNING OUT GOAL
STRIVING IN ADVANCE
Being strongly committed to a goal is a necessary but often not sufficient step
toward goal attainment as the way to the goal may be cobbled with difficulties, hindrances, and set-backs (Bargh, Gollwitzer, & Oettingen, 2010). The
problems of goal implementation that people are most frequently confronted
with are the following: people may fail to get started with goal striving, fail
to stay on track when goal striving has been started, overextend with striving for the goal at hand thus losing sight of goals in other equally important
life domains, and finally, people may fail to disengage from an unattainable
goals or futile means. In fact, meta-analytic findings suggest that goals (also
Emerging Trends in the Social and Behavioral Sciences. Edited by Robert Scott and Stephen Kosslyn.
© 2015 John Wiley & Sons, Inc. ISBN 978-1-118-90077-2.

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EMERGING TRENDS IN THE SOCIAL AND BEHAVIORAL SCIENCES

referred to as goal intentions as goals can be understood as instructions people give themselves to perform a certain behavior or to achieve a certain
outcome) account for no more than 28% of variance in goal-directed behavior (Sheeran, 2002). An effective remedy to such impaired goal striving is
planning out in advance how one wants to deal with the critical situations
described earlier (i.e., furnishing one’s goal intentions with implementation
intentions).
Gollwitzer (1993, 1999) highlighted the importance of furnishing goal
intentions with implementation intentions. While goal intentions (goals)
have the structure of “I intend to reach X!” with X relating to a desired future
behavior or outcome, implementation intentions have the structure of “If
situation Y is encountered, then I will perform the goal-directed response Z!”
Thus, implementation intentions define exactly when, where, and how one
wants to act to realize one’s goal intentions. In order to form an implementation intention, individuals need to identify a goal-relevant situational cue
(such as a good opportunity to act or an obstacle to goal pursuit) and link it to
an instrumental goal-directed response. While goal intentions merely specify
a desired future behavior or outcome, the if-component of an implementation intention specifies when and where one wants to act on this goal (i.e., a
certain situation), and the then-component of the implementation intention
specifies the response that is to be initiated. For instance, a person who
wants to complete a writing project (goal intention) might form the following
implementation intention to support the attainment of her goal: “And whenever I sit down at my desktop computer, then I will immediately continue
with writing on my manuscript!” Extensive empirical research supports
the assumption that implementation intentions help close the gap between
holding goals and attaining them, and this is true for all kind of goals in the
academic, health, and interpersonal domains. A meta-analysis published in
2006 based on close to a hundred implementation intention studies showed
a medium to large effect on increased rate of goal attainment (d = 0.61;
Gollwitzer & Sheeran, 2006).
IMPLEMENTATION INTENTIONS AS A MEANS TO OVERCOME
TYPICAL PROBLEMS OF GOAL STRIVING
Implementation intentions were found to help individuals getting started with
goal striving in terms of remembering to act (e.g., taking a flu shot; Milkman,
Beshears, Choi, Laibson, & Madrian, 2011) and overcoming an initial reluctance to act (e.g., with respect to undertaking a testicular self-examination,
performing cervical cancer screening, resuming activity after joint replacement surgery, starting to eat a low-fat diet, and engaging in more physical
exercise; summary by Gollwitzer, 2014).

Setting One’s Mind on Action: Planning Out Goal Striving in Advance

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However, many such goals (e.g., to eat a low-fat diet) cannot be accomplished by a discrete, one-shot action because they require that people keep
striving over an extended period of time. Staying on track may then become
very difficult when certain internal stimuli (e.g., being anxious and overburdened) or external stimuli (e.g., temptations and distractions) interfere.
However, implementation intentions can be used to protect an ongoing goal
striving from the negative influence of interferences from both inside and
outside the person (e.g., Achtziger, Gollwitzer, & Sheeran, 2008). Such implementation intentions may use very different formats. For instance, if a teacher
wants to stay friendly to a student who keeps making outrageous requests,
she can form suppression-oriented implementation intentions, such as “And
if the student approaches me with an outrageous request, then I will not get
upset!” The then-component of such suppression-oriented implementation
intentions does not have to be worded in terms of not showing (i.e., negating)
the critical behavior (in the present example getting upset); it may alternatively specify a replacement behavior (“ … , then I will respond in a friendly
manner!”), or focus on ignoring the critical cue (“ … , then I’ll ignore her
request!”). Recent research (Adriaanse, Van Oosten, De Ridder, De Wit, &
Evers, 2011) suggests that negation implementation intentions are less effective than the latter two types of implementation intentions (i.e., replacement
and ignore implementation intentions). However, an important alternative
way of using implementation intentions to protect one’s ongoing goal striving from derailment exists. One can also form implementation intentions
geared toward stabilizing the ongoing focal goal pursuit (e.g., when I have
finished the first part of the task at hand, then I will immediately turn to
the second part). Bayer, Gollwitzer, and Achtziger (2010) demonstrated the
effectiveness of this strategy in a series of studies analyzing whether making
if-then plans that stabilize an ongoing goal pursuit effectively blocked the
disruptive effects of self-doubts, inappropriate mood, and ego-depletion.
Goals that are no longer feasible and/or desirable in their current form may
require disengaging from a chosen means or goals. Such disengagement from
dysfunctional means or unattainable goals can free up resources and minimize negative affect (frustration) resulting from repeated negative feedback.
However, because of self-defensiveness individuals often stick to a chosen
means or goal too long thus ultimately hurting themselves. Luckily, implementation intentions can be used to promote functional disengagement by
specifying negative performance feedback as a critical cue, and linking this
cue to switching to an alternative goal or means. Indeed, when research participants were asked to form implementation intentions that linked negative
feedback on the ongoing goal striving to immediately switching to a different
means or goal or to reflecting on the message entailed by the received failure
feedback on the ongoing goal striving, functional disengagement from goals

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EMERGING TRENDS IN THE SOCIAL AND BEHAVIORAL SCIENCES

and means was found to occur more frequently than for participants who
had only formed respective goal intentions or had formed no intentions at
all (Henderson, Gollwitzer, & Oettingen, 2007).
Finally, forming implementation intentions can help preventing resource
depletion as it enables individuals to engage in automated goal striving
and behavior control that does not require high levels of deliberate effort
(see the following text). Consequently, the self should not become depleted
(Muraven & Baumeister, 2000) when goal striving is regulated by implementation intentions. Indeed, in studies using ego-depletion paradigms,
research participants who formed implementation intentions to self-regulate
performance on a first task did not show reduced self-regulatory capacity
when asked to start working on a different subsequent task (e.g., Webb &
Sheeran, 2003).
PROCESS EXPLANATION: AUTOMATIC ACTION INITIATION
Research on the underlying mechanisms of implementation intention effects
(summary by Gollwitzer & Oettingen, 2011) has discovered that implementation intentions facilitate goal attainment on the basis of psychological mechanisms that relate to the anticipated situation (specified in the if-part of the
plan), and the mental link created between the if-part and the then-part of the
plan. Because forming an implementation intention implies the selection of
a critical future situation, the mental representation of this situation becomes
highly activated and hence more accessible. This heightened accessibility of
the if-part of the plan has been observed in several studies using different
cognitive task paradigms (e.g., cue detection, flanker, dichotic listening, lexical decision, and cued recall task paradigms). In a study by Parks-Stamm,
Gollwitzer, and Oettingen (2007) using a lexical decision task paradigm, it
was even observed that implementation intentions not only increase the activation level of the specified critical cues but also diminish the activation level
of nonspecified competing situational cues. There are also studies that explicitly tested whether the heightened accessibility of the mental representation
of critical cues that are specified in an implementation intention mediated the
attainment of the respective goal intention. For instance, Aarts, Dijksterhuis,
and Midden (1999), using a lexical decision task, found that the formation of
implementation intentions led to faster lexical decision times for those words
that described the specified critical situation. Furthermore, the heightened
accessibility of the critical situation (as measured by faster lexical decision
responses) mediated the beneficial effects of implementation intentions on
goal attainment.
Further studies indicated that forming implementation intentions not only
heightens the activation level of the mental presentation of the situational

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cues specified in the if-component but also creates a strong associative link
between the mental representation of the specified opportunity and the mental representation of the specified response. These associative links seem to
be quite stable over time (Papies, Aarts, & de Vries, 2009). In mediation analyses, it was found that cue accessibility and the strength of the cue-response
link conjointly mediated the impact of implementation intention formation
on goal attainment (Webb & Sheeran, 2008).
Gollwitzer (1999) argued that the strong associative (critical situation
with goal-directed response) links created by forming implementation
intentions should lead to automatic action initiation once the critical cue
is encountered. Indeed, extensive experimental research found that the
initiation of the goal-directed responses specified in the then-component of
implementation intentions did exhibit features of automaticity, including
immediacy, efficiency, and no conscious involvement (in the sense that no
conscious self-instruction to act is needed). If-then planners were found to
act more quickly (e.g., Gollwitzer & Brandstätter, 1997, Experiment 3), to
deal more effectively with cognitive demands (i.e., the speed-up effects still
evinced under high cognitive load; Brandstätter, Lengfelder, & Gollwitzer,
2001), and they did not need to consciously intend to act in the critical
moment. Consistent with this last assumption, implementation intention
effects are observed even when the critical cue was presented subliminally
(e.g., Bayer, Achtziger, Gollwitzer, & Moskowitz, 2009).
Further support for the hypothesis that action control by implementation
intentions qualifies as automatic was obtained in an fMRI study reported
by Gilbert, Gollwitzer, Cohen, Oettingen, and Burgess (2009), in which participants had to perform a prospective memory task (i.e., degree of acting
on a prospective stimulus is assessed) on the basis of either mere goal or
goal plus implementation intention instructions. Acting on the basis of goal
intentions was associated with brain activity in the lateral rostral prefrontal
cortex, whereas acting on the basis of implementation intentions was associated with brain activity in the medial rostral prefrontal cortex. Brain activity
in the latter area is known to be associated with bottom-up (stimulus) control
of action, whereas brain activity in the former area is known to be related to
top-down (goal) control of action (Burgess, Dumontheil, & Gilbert, 2007).
THE POWER OF PLANNING
Any self-regulation strategy that claims to facilitate goal striving has to
prove itself under conditions in which people commonly fail to meet their
goals. Such conditions are manifold, but the following three situations
stick out: (i) situations in which a person’s knowledge and skills constrain
performance, such as taking difficult academic tests; (2) situations in which

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EMERGING TRENDS IN THE SOCIAL AND BEHAVIORAL SCIENCES

an opponent’s behavior limits one’s performance, as is true for competitive
performance settings; and (3) situations in which the wanted behavior
(e.g., no littering) runs into conflict with reflexive antagonistic responses
(i.e., habitual littering). For all three of these situations, implementation
intentions, however, stood their test.
As to situations where knowledge and skills constrain performance and
thus willpower is needed to persist on the challenging task at hand, simple
implementation intentions were found to enhance participants’ performance
on a standardized intelligence test. Participants only had to form the following implementation intention: “Whenever I start a new problem on this
test, then I will tell myself: I can solve this problem!” (Bayer & Gollwitzer,
2007). As to situations where an opponent limits one’s performance, studies
in which pairs of negotiators had to distribute a common resource were conducted (Trötschel & Gollwitzer, 2007). In these studies, negotiators played the
roles of representatives of two neighboring countries and negotiated the distribution of the regions, villages, and towns of a disputed island. When the
participants formed implementation intentions to make cooperative counterproposals whenever a proposal from the counterpart was received, the pairs
of negotiators managed to be more cooperative even when the negotiation
had to take place under a loss frame (i.e., participants are told how many
points they lose rather than win during each round of negotiation and are
thus reluctant to make concessions). Apparently, implementation intentions
managed to break the competiveness enhancing the effect of loss framing.
Recent research using the ultimatum game also showed that implementation intentions can help performance in the face of opponents. Impulsive
rejections of unfair offers at a cost to oneself were successfully curbed by making if-then plans geared toward down-regulating anger (Kirk, Gollwitzer, &
Carnevale, 2011).
Finally, as to situations where a desired behavior is in conflict with an
antagonistic reflexive response a host of studies has been conducted as well.
The self-regulation of an ongoing goal pursuit becomes particularly difficult
when reflexive responses are in conflict with initiating and executing the
needed goal-directed responses that are instrumental to goal attainment
(Wood & Neal, 2007). Can the self-regulation strategy of forming if-then plans
help people to let their goals win out over their habitual reflexive responses?
By assuming that action control by implementation intentions is immediate
and efficient, and adopting a simple horserace model of action control
(Adriaanse, Gollwitzer, De Ridder, De Wit, & Kroese, 2011), people should
be in a position to break habitual responses by forming implementation
intentions that spell out a response contrary to the habitual response to the
critical situation. This assumption has been tested by analyzing the control
of various kinds of reflexive responses: cognitive, affective, and behavioral.

Setting One’s Mind on Action: Planning Out Goal Striving in Advance

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Automatic biases, such as stereotyping, represent a reflexive cognitive
response that can be in opposition to one’s fairness goals. Extending earlier
work by Gollwitzer and Schaal (1998); Stewart and Payne (2008) found
that implementation intentions designed to counter automatic stereotypes
(e.g., “When I see a black face, I will then think ‘safe’!”) could indeed
reduce automatic stereotyping. Research by Mendoza, Gollwitzer, and
Amodio (2010) using the so-called shooter task paradigm has added to these
findings by showing that the down-regulation of automatic stereotyping by
implementation intentions has the desired behavioral consequences.
With respect to reflexive affective responses, a study by Schweiger Gallo, Keil,
McCulloch, Rockstroh, and Gollwitzer (2009, Study 3) using dense-array
EEG showed that implementation intentions specifying an ignore-response
in the then-component of an implementation intention helped control fear
in response to pictures of spiders in participants with spider phobia (who
are known to reflexively show fear responses when confronted with spider
pictures). Importantly, the obtained electro-cortical correlates revealed that
those participants who bolstered their goal intention to stay calm with an
ignore implementation intention showed significantly reduced early activity
in the visual cortex in response to spider pictures, as reflected in a smaller
P1 (assessed at 120 ms after a spider picture had been presented). This EEG
finding suggests that implementation intentions indeed lead to strategic
automation of the specified goal-directed response (an ignore response)
when the critical cue (a spider picture) is encountered, as conscious effortful
action initiation is known to take longer than 120 ms (at least 300 ms).
Apparently, this strategically automated ignore-response managed to
outrun the reflexive fear response that characterizes individuals with spider
phobia.
Finally, with respect to reflexive behavioral responses, Cohen, Bayer, Jaudas,
and Gollwitzer (2008, Study 2) demonstrated that implementation intentions
help suppressing habitual behavioral responses in a Simon classification
task. For this task, it is found that classifying stimuli (e.g., low vs high tones)
with the hand that corresponds to the location of the presented stimulus
(e.g., low tones presented on the left side with the left hand and high tones
presented on the right side with the right hand) is faster than classifying
them with the noncorresponding hand (e.g., low tones presented on the left
side with the right hand and high tones presented on the right side with the
left hand). Specifying a noncorresponding response in an implementation
intention that is geared toward fast responding did effectively alleviate
the comparative disadvantage (reduced speed) of classifications made by
the noncorresponding hand. Moreover, implementation intentions were
found to help people to control behavioral priming effects (Gollwitzer,
Sheeran, Trötschel, & Webb, 2011) and break bad snacking habits Adriaanse,

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Gollwitzer, et al., 2011). Finally, in studies with children with ADHD, it
was observed that implementation intentions can help to inhibit overlearned responses (Gawrilow & Gollwitzer, 2008) and to slow impulsive
responses in a delay of gratification task (Gawrilow, Gollwitzer, & Oettingen,
2011).
Still, forming implementation intentions may not always block reflexive
responses. Whether the reflexive response or the if-then guided response
will “win the race” depends on the relative strength of the two behavioral
orientations. If the reflexive response is based on strong habits, and the
if-then guided response is based on weak implementation intentions, the
reflexive response should win over the if-then planned response; and
the reverse should be true when weak habits are in conflict with strong
implementation intentions. This implies that controlling behavior based on
strong habits requires the formation of strong implementation intentions.
Such enhancement of if-then plans can be achieved by various measures.
One pertains to creating particularly strong links between situational
cues (if-component) and goal-directed responses (then-component) for
instance by asking participants to use mental imagery. Alternatively, people
can tailor the critical cue specified in the if-part of an implementation
intention to personally relevant reasons for the habitual behavior one
wants to overcome and then link this cue to an antagonistic response.
In addition, certain formats of implementation intentions (i.e., replacement and ignore implementation intentions) seem to be more effective
in fighting habits than others (i.e., negation implementation intentions).
Moreover, there is also the option of forming an implementation intention that targets the elicitation of a reflective mindset when the critical
situation is encountered; this mindset should be incompatible with automatic responding and thus hamper reflexive responses (see Gollwitzer,
2014).

FUTURE RESEARCH ON IMPLEMENTATION INTENTIONS
One avenue for future research on implementation intentions is using them
to enrich behavior change interventions. Implementation intentions are
known to unfold their beneficial effects in particular when goal commitment
and implementation intention commitment is high (Achtziger, Bayer, &
Gollwitzer, 2011; Sheeran, Webb, & Gollwitzer, 2005, Study 2). Accordingly,
behavior change interventions involving implementation intentions need to
assure these prerequisites. One intervention that does this very effectively is
called mental contrasting (Oettingen, 2012). Engaging in mental contrasting
(Oettingen, Pak, & Schnetter, 2001) requires from participants to juxtapose

Setting One’s Mind on Action: Planning Out Goal Striving in Advance

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fantasies about desired future outcomes with obstacles of present reality.
This mental exercise not only creates strong goal commitments but also
guarantees the identification of personally relevant obstacles that can then
be specified as the critical cues in the if-component of implementation intentions; moreover, mental contrasting has been found to create a readiness for
making plans that link obstacles to instrumental behaviors. Recent intervention research has combined mental contrasting with forming implementation
intentions (i.e., created MCII). MCII intervention studies observed lasting
behavior change with regard to physical exercise and healthy eating (4
months to 2 years, respectively; Stadler, Oettingen, & Gollwitzer, 2009, 2010).
In addition, MCII helped to control the negative eating habit of unhealthy
snacking in college students (Adriaanse, Oettingen, et al., 2010). Here, MCII
worked for both students with weak and strong such habits, and it was
more effective than either mental contrasting or forming implementation
intentions alone. Finally, MCII has been found to have beneficial effects
outside of the health domain as well. For example, it benefited study efforts
in adolescents preparing for standardized tests (Duckworth, Grant, Loew,
Oettingen, & Gollwitzer, 2011) and promoted integrative bargaining in
dyads negotiating over the sale of a car (Kirk, Oettingen, & Gollwitzer,
2013).
Another new line of implementation intention research pertains to the use
of implementation intentions in groups. The questions addressed in this
research are twofold: First, it is asked whether individual group members
can use implementation intentions to promote collaboration and thus
improve group performance. Second, it is asked whether groups can also
use We-implementation intentions (If we encounter … , then we will … !) to
promote group performance, and which type of implementation intention
(I- vs We-Implementation Intentions) is more conducive to promoting
the various types of group performance (Wieber, Thürmer, & Gollwitzer,
2013).
A final new line of implementation intention research pertains to facilitating social interactions. For instance, Stern and West (2014) report that
implementation intentions specifying how to act when feeling anxious
boosts interest in sustained contact and close interpersonal distance in
interracial interactions. Moreover, it was demonstrated by Przybylinski and
Andersen (2013) that transference (which is known to run off outside of conscious awareness and often affects ongoing social interactions negatively)
can be effectively prevented using implementation intentions. And finally,
Wieber, Gollwitzer, and Sheeran (2013) found that mimicry effects on social
interactions are controllable by forming implementation intentions—even
though people are not usually aware of the influences that mimicry exerts
on their judgments and behavior.

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behavioral priming effects. Psychological Science, 22, 901–907.
Henderson, M. D., Gollwitzer, P. M., & Oettingen, G. (2007). Implementation intentions and disengagement from a failing course of action. Journal of Behavioral Decision Making, 20, 81–102.
Kirk, D., Gollwitzer, P. M., & Carnevale, P. J. (2011). Self-regulation in ultimatum
bargaining: Goals and plans help accepting unfair but profitable offers. Social Cognition, 29, 528–546.
Kirk, D., Oettingen, G., & Gollwitzer, P. M. (2013). Promoting integrative bargaining:
Mental contrasting with implementation intentions. International Journal of Conflict
Management, 24, 148–165.
Mendoza, S. A., Gollwitzer, P. M., & Amodio, D. M. (2010). Reducing the expression of implicit stereotypes: Reflexive control through implementation intentions.
Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin, 36, 512–523.
Milkman, K. L., Beshears, J., Choi, J. J., Laibson, D., & Madrian, B. C. (2011). Using
implementation intentions prompts to enhance influenza vaccination rates. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, 108, 10415–10420.
Muraven, M., & Baumeister, R. F. (2000). Self-regulation and depletion of limited
resources: Does self-control resemble a muscle? Psychological Bulletin, 126, 247–259.

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Oettingen, G. (2012). Future thought and behavior change. European Review of Social
Psychology, 23, 1–63.
Oettingen, G., Pak, H., & Schnetter, K. (2001). Self-regulation of goal setting: Turning
free fantasies about the future into binding goals. Journal of Personality and Social
Psychology, 80, 736–753.
Papies, E., Aarts, H., & de Vries, N. K. (2009). Grounding your plans: Implementation
intentions go beyond the mere creation of goal-directed associations. Journal of
Experimental Social Psychology, 45, 1148–1151.
Parks-Stamm, E. J., Gollwitzer, P. M., & Oettingen, G. (2007). Action control by
implementation intentions: Effective cue detection and efficient response initiation. Social Cognition, 25, 248–266.
Przybylinski, E., & Andersen, S. M. (2013). Short-circuiting transference using implementation intentions. Journal of Experimental Social Psychology, 49(3), 566–572.
Schweiger Gallo, I., Keil, A., McCulloch, K. C., Rockstroh, B., & Gollwitzer, P. M.
(2009). Strategic automation of emotion regulation. Journal of Personality and Social
Psychology, 96, 11–31.
Sheeran, P. (2002). Intention-behavior relations: A conceptual and empirical review.
European Review of Social Psychology, 12, 1–30.
Sheeran, P., Webb, T. L., & Gollwitzer, P. M. (2005). The interplay between goal intentions and implementation intentions. Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin, 31,
87–98.
Stadler, G., Oettingen, G., & Gollwitzer, P. M. (2009). Physical activity in women.
Effects of a self-regulation intervention. American Journal of Preventive Medicine,
36, 29–34.
Stadler, G., Oettingen, G., & Gollwitzer, P. M. (2010). Intervention effects of information and self-regulation on eating fruits and vegetables over two years. Health
Psychology, 29, 274–283.
Stern, C., & West, T. V. (2014). Circumventing anxiety during interpersonal encounters to promote interest in contact: An implementation intention approach. Journal
of Experimental Social Psychology, 50, 82–93.
Stewart, B. D., & Payne, B. K. (2008). Bringing automatic stereotyping under control:
Implementation intentions as efficient means of thought control. Personality and
Social Psychology Bulletin, 34, 1332–1345.
Trötschel, R., & Gollwitzer, P. M. (2007). Implementation intentions and the willful
pursuit of prosocial goals in negotiations. Journal of Experimental Social Psychology,
43, 579–589.
Webb, T. L., & Sheeran, P. (2003). Can implementation intentions help to overcome
ego-depletion. Journal of Experimental Social Psychology, 39, 279–286.
Webb, T. L., & Sheeran, P. (2008). Mechanisms of implementation intention effects:
The role of goal intentions, self-efficacy, and accessibility of plan components.
British Journal of Social Psychology, 47, 373–395.
Wieber, F., Gollwitzer, P. M., & Sheeran, P. (2013). Strategic regulation of mimicry
effects by implementation intentions. Journal of Experimental Social Psychology, 53,
31–39.

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Wieber, F., Thürmer, J. L., & Gollwitzer, P. M. (2013). Intentional action control in
individuals and groups. In G. Seebaß, M. Schmitz & P. M. Gollwitzer (Eds.), Acting intentionally and its limits: Individuals, groups, institutions (pp. 133–162). Berlin,
Germany: DeGruyter.
Wood, W., & Neal, D. T. (2007). A new look at habits and the habit-goal interface.
Psychological Review, 114, 842–862.

PETER M. GOLLWITZER SHORT BIOGRAPHY
Peter M. Gollwitzer is a Professor of Psychology at the Psychology
Department of New York University. Throughout his academic career, he
has developed various models of action control: the Theory of Symbolic
Self-Completion (with Robert A. Wicklund), the Mindset Model of Action
Phases (with Heinz Heckhausen), the Auto-Motive Model of Automatic Goal
Striving (with John A. Bargh), and the Theory of Intentional Action Control
(that makes a distinction between goal intentions and implementation
intentions). In all of these models, various mechanisms of behavior change
are delineated and respective moderators and mediators are distilled. His
recent research uses insights on action control by if-then planning to develop
powerful time and cost effective behavior change interventions; this work
is rooted in the mental contrasting theory of goal pursuit as proposed by
Gabriele Oettingen.
http://www.psych.nyu.edu/gollwitzer/

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EMERGING TRENDS IN THE SOCIAL AND BEHAVIORAL SCIENCES

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Setting One’s Mind on Action:
Planning Out Goal Striving in
Advance
PETER M. GOLLWITZER

Abstract
Ineffective goal striving may be overcome using a simple self-regulation strategy:
preparing goal striving in advance by forming implementation intentions (i.e.,
making if-then plans). This strategy helps to cope with the classic challenges to
goal striving: getting started, staying on track, not overextending oneself, and
disengaging from faulty means. Interestingly, these beneficial effects are observed
no matter whether hindrances from within (e.g., ego depletion) or outside (e.g.,
social influence) the person are to be dealt with. In this essay, the processes on which
the beneficial effects of implementation intentions are based will be discussed by
pointing to relevant research using cognitive task paradigms and assessing brain
data. Moreover, recent findings are reported demonstrating that implementation
intentions can be used to curb reflexive cognitive, affective, and behavioral responses
that interfere with a person’s focal goal pursuit. In closing this essay, a behavior
change intervention (i.e., mental contrasting with implementation intentions) is
introduced that establishes the prerequisites for implementation intention effects
to occur, and research areas in psychology are pointed to that could benefit from
conducting implementation intention research.

SETTING ONE’S MIND ON ACTION: PLANNING OUT GOAL
STRIVING IN ADVANCE
Being strongly committed to a goal is a necessary but often not sufficient step
toward goal attainment as the way to the goal may be cobbled with difficulties, hindrances, and set-backs (Bargh, Gollwitzer, & Oettingen, 2010). The
problems of goal implementation that people are most frequently confronted
with are the following: people may fail to get started with goal striving, fail
to stay on track when goal striving has been started, overextend with striving for the goal at hand thus losing sight of goals in other equally important
life domains, and finally, people may fail to disengage from an unattainable
goals or futile means. In fact, meta-analytic findings suggest that goals (also
Emerging Trends in the Social and Behavioral Sciences. Edited by Robert Scott and Stephen Kosslyn.
© 2015 John Wiley & Sons, Inc. ISBN 978-1-118-90077-2.

1

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EMERGING TRENDS IN THE SOCIAL AND BEHAVIORAL SCIENCES

referred to as goal intentions as goals can be understood as instructions people give themselves to perform a certain behavior or to achieve a certain
outcome) account for no more than 28% of variance in goal-directed behavior (Sheeran, 2002). An effective remedy to such impaired goal striving is
planning out in advance how one wants to deal with the critical situations
described earlier (i.e., furnishing one’s goal intentions with implementation
intentions).
Gollwitzer (1993, 1999) highlighted the importance of furnishing goal
intentions with implementation intentions. While goal intentions (goals)
have the structure of “I intend to reach X!” with X relating to a desired future
behavior or outcome, implementation intentions have the structure of “If
situation Y is encountered, then I will perform the goal-directed response Z!”
Thus, implementation intentions define exactly when, where, and how one
wants to act to realize one’s goal intentions. In order to form an implementation intention, individuals need to identify a goal-relevant situational cue
(such as a good opportunity to act or an obstacle to goal pursuit) and link it to
an instrumental goal-directed response. While goal intentions merely specify
a desired future behavior or outcome, the if-component of an implementation intention specifies when and where one wants to act on this goal (i.e., a
certain situation), and the then-component of the implementation intention
specifies the response that is to be initiated. For instance, a person who
wants to complete a writing project (goal intention) might form the following
implementation intention to support the attainment of her goal: “And whenever I sit down at my desktop computer, then I will immediately continue
with writing on my manuscript!” Extensive empirical research supports
the assumption that implementation intentions help close the gap between
holding goals and attaining them, and this is true for all kind of goals in the
academic, health, and interpersonal domains. A meta-analysis published in
2006 based on close to a hundred implementation intention studies showed
a medium to large effect on increased rate of goal attainment (d = 0.61;
Gollwitzer & Sheeran, 2006).
IMPLEMENTATION INTENTIONS AS A MEANS TO OVERCOME
TYPICAL PROBLEMS OF GOAL STRIVING
Implementation intentions were found to help individuals getting started with
goal striving in terms of remembering to act (e.g., taking a flu shot; Milkman,
Beshears, Choi, Laibson, & Madrian, 2011) and overcoming an initial reluctance to act (e.g., with respect to undertaking a testicular self-examination,
performing cervical cancer screening, resuming activity after joint replacement surgery, starting to eat a low-fat diet, and engaging in more physical
exercise; summary by Gollwitzer, 2014).

Setting One’s Mind on Action: Planning Out Goal Striving in Advance

3

However, many such goals (e.g., to eat a low-fat diet) cannot be accomplished by a discrete, one-shot action because they require that people keep
striving over an extended period of time. Staying on track may then become
very difficult when certain internal stimuli (e.g., being anxious and overburdened) or external stimuli (e.g., temptations and distractions) interfere.
However, implementation intentions can be used to protect an ongoing goal
striving from the negative influence of interferences from both inside and
outside the person (e.g., Achtziger, Gollwitzer, & Sheeran, 2008). Such implementation intentions may use very different formats. For instance, if a teacher
wants to stay friendly to a student who keeps making outrageous requests,
she can form suppression-oriented implementation intentions, such as “And
if the student approaches me with an outrageous request, then I will not get
upset!” The then-component of such suppression-oriented implementation
intentions does not have to be worded in terms of not showing (i.e., negating)
the critical behavior (in the present example getting upset); it may alternatively specify a replacement behavior (“ … , then I will respond in a friendly
manner!”), or focus on ignoring the critical cue (“ … , then I’ll ignore her
request!”). Recent research (Adriaanse, Van Oosten, De Ridder, De Wit, &
Evers, 2011) suggests that negation implementation intentions are less effective than the latter two types of implementation intentions (i.e., replacement
and ignore implementation intentions). However, an important alternative
way of using implementation intentions to protect one’s ongoing goal striving from derailment exists. One can also form implementation intentions
geared toward stabilizing the ongoing focal goal pursuit (e.g., when I have
finished the first part of the task at hand, then I will immediately turn to
the second part). Bayer, Gollwitzer, and Achtziger (2010) demonstrated the
effectiveness of this strategy in a series of studies analyzing whether making
if-then plans that stabilize an ongoing goal pursuit effectively blocked the
disruptive effects of self-doubts, inappropriate mood, and ego-depletion.
Goals that are no longer feasible and/or desirable in their current form may
require disengaging from a chosen means or goals. Such disengagement from
dysfunctional means or unattainable goals can free up resources and minimize negative affect (frustration) resulting from repeated negative feedback.
However, because of self-defensiveness individuals often stick to a chosen
means or goal too long thus ultimately hurting themselves. Luckily, implementation intentions can be used to promote functional disengagement by
specifying negative performance feedback as a critical cue, and linking this
cue to switching to an alternative goal or means. Indeed, when research participants were asked to form implementation intentions that linked negative
feedback on the ongoing goal striving to immediately switching to a different
means or goal or to reflecting on the message entailed by the received failure
feedback on the ongoing goal striving, functional disengagement from goals

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EMERGING TRENDS IN THE SOCIAL AND BEHAVIORAL SCIENCES

and means was found to occur more frequently than for participants who
had only formed respective goal intentions or had formed no intentions at
all (Henderson, Gollwitzer, & Oettingen, 2007).
Finally, forming implementation intentions can help preventing resource
depletion as it enables individuals to engage in automated goal striving
and behavior control that does not require high levels of deliberate effort
(see the following text). Consequently, the self should not become depleted
(Muraven & Baumeister, 2000) when goal striving is regulated by implementation intentions. Indeed, in studies using ego-depletion paradigms,
research participants who formed implementation intentions to self-regulate
performance on a first task did not show reduced self-regulatory capacity
when asked to start working on a different subsequent task (e.g., Webb &
Sheeran, 2003).
PROCESS EXPLANATION: AUTOMATIC ACTION INITIATION
Research on the underlying mechanisms of implementation intention effects
(summary by Gollwitzer & Oettingen, 2011) has discovered that implementation intentions facilitate goal attainment on the basis of psychological mechanisms that relate to the anticipated situation (specified in the if-part of the
plan), and the mental link created between the if-part and the then-part of the
plan. Because forming an implementation intention implies the selection of
a critical future situation, the mental representation of this situation becomes
highly activated and hence more accessible. This heightened accessibility of
the if-part of the plan has been observed in several studies using different
cognitive task paradigms (e.g., cue detection, flanker, dichotic listening, lexical decision, and cued recall task paradigms). In a study by Parks-Stamm,
Gollwitzer, and Oettingen (2007) using a lexical decision task paradigm, it
was even observed that implementation intentions not only increase the activation level of the specified critical cues but also diminish the activation level
of nonspecified competing situational cues. There are also studies that explicitly tested whether the heightened accessibility of the mental representation
of critical cues that are specified in an implementation intention mediated the
attainment of the respective goal intention. For instance, Aarts, Dijksterhuis,
and Midden (1999), using a lexical decision task, found that the formation of
implementation intentions led to faster lexical decision times for those words
that described the specified critical situation. Furthermore, the heightened
accessibility of the critical situation (as measured by faster lexical decision
responses) mediated the beneficial effects of implementation intentions on
goal attainment.
Further studies indicated that forming implementation intentions not only
heightens the activation level of the mental presentation of the situational

Setting One’s Mind on Action: Planning Out Goal Striving in Advance

5

cues specified in the if-component but also creates a strong associative link
between the mental representation of the specified opportunity and the mental representation of the specified response. These associative links seem to
be quite stable over time (Papies, Aarts, & de Vries, 2009). In mediation analyses, it was found that cue accessibility and the strength of the cue-response
link conjointly mediated the impact of implementation intention formation
on goal attainment (Webb & Sheeran, 2008).
Gollwitzer (1999) argued that the strong associative (critical situation
with goal-directed response) links created by forming implementation
intentions should lead to automatic action initiation once the critical cue
is encountered. Indeed, extensive experimental research found that the
initiation of the goal-directed responses specified in the then-component of
implementation intentions did exhibit features of automaticity, including
immediacy, efficiency, and no conscious involvement (in the sense that no
conscious self-instruction to act is needed). If-then planners were found to
act more quickly (e.g., Gollwitzer & Brandstätter, 1997, Experiment 3), to
deal more effectively with cognitive demands (i.e., the speed-up effects still
evinced under high cognitive load; Brandstätter, Lengfelder, & Gollwitzer,
2001), and they did not need to consciously intend to act in the critical
moment. Consistent with this last assumption, implementation intention
effects are observed even when the critical cue was presented subliminally
(e.g., Bayer, Achtziger, Gollwitzer, & Moskowitz, 2009).
Further support for the hypothesis that action control by implementation
intentions qualifies as automatic was obtained in an fMRI study reported
by Gilbert, Gollwitzer, Cohen, Oettingen, and Burgess (2009), in which participants had to perform a prospective memory task (i.e., degree of acting
on a prospective stimulus is assessed) on the basis of either mere goal or
goal plus implementation intention instructions. Acting on the basis of goal
intentions was associated with brain activity in the lateral rostral prefrontal
cortex, whereas acting on the basis of implementation intentions was associated with brain activity in the medial rostral prefrontal cortex. Brain activity
in the latter area is known to be associated with bottom-up (stimulus) control
of action, whereas brain activity in the former area is known to be related to
top-down (goal) control of action (Burgess, Dumontheil, & Gilbert, 2007).
THE POWER OF PLANNING
Any self-regulation strategy that claims to facilitate goal striving has to
prove itself under conditions in which people commonly fail to meet their
goals. Such conditions are manifold, but the following three situations
stick out: (i) situations in which a person’s knowledge and skills constrain
performance, such as taking difficult academic tests; (2) situations in which

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EMERGING TRENDS IN THE SOCIAL AND BEHAVIORAL SCIENCES

an opponent’s behavior limits one’s performance, as is true for competitive
performance settings; and (3) situations in which the wanted behavior
(e.g., no littering) runs into conflict with reflexive antagonistic responses
(i.e., habitual littering). For all three of these situations, implementation
intentions, however, stood their test.
As to situations where knowledge and skills constrain performance and
thus willpower is needed to persist on the challenging task at hand, simple
implementation intentions were found to enhance participants’ performance
on a standardized intelligence test. Participants only had to form the following implementation intention: “Whenever I start a new problem on this
test, then I will tell myself: I can solve this problem!” (Bayer & Gollwitzer,
2007). As to situations where an opponent limits one’s performance, studies
in which pairs of negotiators had to distribute a common resource were conducted (Trötschel & Gollwitzer, 2007). In these studies, negotiators played the
roles of representatives of two neighboring countries and negotiated the distribution of the regions, villages, and towns of a disputed island. When the
participants formed implementation intentions to make cooperative counterproposals whenever a proposal from the counterpart was received, the pairs
of negotiators managed to be more cooperative even when the negotiation
had to take place under a loss frame (i.e., participants are told how many
points they lose rather than win during each round of negotiation and are
thus reluctant to make concessions). Apparently, implementation intentions
managed to break the competiveness enhancing the effect of loss framing.
Recent research using the ultimatum game also showed that implementation intentions can help performance in the face of opponents. Impulsive
rejections of unfair offers at a cost to oneself were successfully curbed by making if-then plans geared toward down-regulating anger (Kirk, Gollwitzer, &
Carnevale, 2011).
Finally, as to situations where a desired behavior is in conflict with an
antagonistic reflexive response a host of studies has been conducted as well.
The self-regulation of an ongoing goal pursuit becomes particularly difficult
when reflexive responses are in conflict with initiating and executing the
needed goal-directed responses that are instrumental to goal attainment
(Wood & Neal, 2007). Can the self-regulation strategy of forming if-then plans
help people to let their goals win out over their habitual reflexive responses?
By assuming that action control by implementation intentions is immediate
and efficient, and adopting a simple horserace model of action control
(Adriaanse, Gollwitzer, De Ridder, De Wit, & Kroese, 2011), people should
be in a position to break habitual responses by forming implementation
intentions that spell out a response contrary to the habitual response to the
critical situation. This assumption has been tested by analyzing the control
of various kinds of reflexive responses: cognitive, affective, and behavioral.

Setting One’s Mind on Action: Planning Out Goal Striving in Advance

7

Automatic biases, such as stereotyping, represent a reflexive cognitive
response that can be in opposition to one’s fairness goals. Extending earlier
work by Gollwitzer and Schaal (1998); Stewart and Payne (2008) found
that implementation intentions designed to counter automatic stereotypes
(e.g., “When I see a black face, I will then think ‘safe’!”) could indeed
reduce automatic stereotyping. Research by Mendoza, Gollwitzer, and
Amodio (2010) using the so-called shooter task paradigm has added to these
findings by showing that the down-regulation of automatic stereotyping by
implementation intentions has the desired behavioral consequences.
With respect to reflexive affective responses, a study by Schweiger Gallo, Keil,
McCulloch, Rockstroh, and Gollwitzer (2009, Study 3) using dense-array
EEG showed that implementation intentions specifying an ignore-response
in the then-component of an implementation intention helped control fear
in response to pictures of spiders in participants with spider phobia (who
are known to reflexively show fear responses when confronted with spider
pictures). Importantly, the obtained electro-cortical correlates revealed that
those participants who bolstered their goal intention to stay calm with an
ignore implementation intention showed significantly reduced early activity
in the visual cortex in response to spider pictures, as reflected in a smaller
P1 (assessed at 120 ms after a spider picture had been presented). This EEG
finding suggests that implementation intentions indeed lead to strategic
automation of the specified goal-directed response (an ignore response)
when the critical cue (a spider picture) is encountered, as conscious effortful
action initiation is known to take longer than 120 ms (at least 300 ms).
Apparently, this strategically automated ignore-response managed to
outrun the reflexive fear response that characterizes individuals with spider
phobia.
Finally, with respect to reflexive behavioral responses, Cohen, Bayer, Jaudas,
and Gollwitzer (2008, Study 2) demonstrated that implementation intentions
help suppressing habitual behavioral responses in a Simon classification
task. For this task, it is found that classifying stimuli (e.g., low vs high tones)
with the hand that corresponds to the location of the presented stimulus
(e.g., low tones presented on the left side with the left hand and high tones
presented on the right side with the right hand) is faster than classifying
them with the noncorresponding hand (e.g., low tones presented on the left
side with the right hand and high tones presented on the right side with the
left hand). Specifying a noncorresponding response in an implementation
intention that is geared toward fast responding did effectively alleviate
the comparative disadvantage (reduced speed) of classifications made by
the noncorresponding hand. Moreover, implementation intentions were
found to help people to control behavioral priming effects (Gollwitzer,
Sheeran, Trötschel, & Webb, 2011) and break bad snacking habits Adriaanse,

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EMERGING TRENDS IN THE SOCIAL AND BEHAVIORAL SCIENCES

Gollwitzer, et al., 2011). Finally, in studies with children with ADHD, it
was observed that implementation intentions can help to inhibit overlearned responses (Gawrilow & Gollwitzer, 2008) and to slow impulsive
responses in a delay of gratification task (Gawrilow, Gollwitzer, & Oettingen,
2011).
Still, forming implementation intentions may not always block reflexive
responses. Whether the reflexive response or the if-then guided response
will “win the race” depends on the relative strength of the two behavioral
orientations. If the reflexive response is based on strong habits, and the
if-then guided response is based on weak implementation intentions, the
reflexive response should win over the if-then planned response; and
the reverse should be true when weak habits are in conflict with strong
implementation intentions. This implies that controlling behavior based on
strong habits requires the formation of strong implementation intentions.
Such enhancement of if-then plans can be achieved by various measures.
One pertains to creating particularly strong links between situational
cues (if-component) and goal-directed responses (then-component) for
instance by asking participants to use mental imagery. Alternatively, people
can tailor the critical cue specified in the if-part of an implementation
intention to personally relevant reasons for the habitual behavior one
wants to overcome and then link this cue to an antagonistic response.
In addition, certain formats of implementation intentions (i.e., replacement and ignore implementation intentions) seem to be more effective
in fighting habits than others (i.e., negation implementation intentions).
Moreover, there is also the option of forming an implementation intention that targets the elicitation of a reflective mindset when the critical
situation is encountered; this mindset should be incompatible with automatic responding and thus hamper reflexive responses (see Gollwitzer,
2014).

FUTURE RESEARCH ON IMPLEMENTATION INTENTIONS
One avenue for future research on implementation intentions is using them
to enrich behavior change interventions. Implementation intentions are
known to unfold their beneficial effects in particular when goal commitment
and implementation intention commitment is high (Achtziger, Bayer, &
Gollwitzer, 2011; Sheeran, Webb, & Gollwitzer, 2005, Study 2). Accordingly,
behavior change interventions involving implementation intentions need to
assure these prerequisites. One intervention that does this very effectively is
called mental contrasting (Oettingen, 2012). Engaging in mental contrasting
(Oettingen, Pak, & Schnetter, 2001) requires from participants to juxtapose

Setting One’s Mind on Action: Planning Out Goal Striving in Advance

9

fantasies about desired future outcomes with obstacles of present reality.
This mental exercise not only creates strong goal commitments but also
guarantees the identification of personally relevant obstacles that can then
be specified as the critical cues in the if-component of implementation intentions; moreover, mental contrasting has been found to create a readiness for
making plans that link obstacles to instrumental behaviors. Recent intervention research has combined mental contrasting with forming implementation
intentions (i.e., created MCII). MCII intervention studies observed lasting
behavior change with regard to physical exercise and healthy eating (4
months to 2 years, respectively; Stadler, Oettingen, & Gollwitzer, 2009, 2010).
In addition, MCII helped to control the negative eating habit of unhealthy
snacking in college students (Adriaanse, Oettingen, et al., 2010). Here, MCII
worked for both students with weak and strong such habits, and it was
more effective than either mental contrasting or forming implementation
intentions alone. Finally, MCII has been found to have beneficial effects
outside of the health domain as well. For example, it benefited study efforts
in adolescents preparing for standardized tests (Duckworth, Grant, Loew,
Oettingen, & Gollwitzer, 2011) and promoted integrative bargaining in
dyads negotiating over the sale of a car (Kirk, Oettingen, & Gollwitzer,
2013).
Another new line of implementation intention research pertains to the use
of implementation intentions in groups. The questions addressed in this
research are twofold: First, it is asked whether individual group members
can use implementation intentions to promote collaboration and thus
improve group performance. Second, it is asked whether groups can also
use We-implementation intentions (If we encounter … , then we will … !) to
promote group performance, and which type of implementation intention
(I- vs We-Implementation Intentions) is more conducive to promoting
the various types of group performance (Wieber, Thürmer, & Gollwitzer,
2013).
A final new line of implementation intention research pertains to facilitating social interactions. For instance, Stern and West (2014) report that
implementation intentions specifying how to act when feeling anxious
boosts interest in sustained contact and close interpersonal distance in
interracial interactions. Moreover, it was demonstrated by Przybylinski and
Andersen (2013) that transference (which is known to run off outside of conscious awareness and often affects ongoing social interactions negatively)
can be effectively prevented using implementation intentions. And finally,
Wieber, Gollwitzer, and Sheeran (2013) found that mimicry effects on social
interactions are controllable by forming implementation intentions—even
though people are not usually aware of the influences that mimicry exerts
on their judgments and behavior.

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REFERENCES
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Social Psychology, 29, 971–979.
Achtziger, A., Bayer, U. C., & Gollwitzer, P. M. (2011). Committing to implementation
intentions: Attention and memory effects for selected situational cues. Motivation
and Emotion, 36, 287–303.
Achtziger, A., Gollwitzer, P. M., & Sheeran, P. (2008). Implementation intentions and
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Psychology Bulletin, 34, 381–393.
Adriaanse, M. A., Gollwitzer, P. M., De Ridder, D. T. D., De Wit, J. B. F., & Kroese, F.
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Bargh, J. A., Gollwitzer, P. M., & Oettingen, G. (2010). Motivation. In S. T. Fiske, D. T.
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Bayer, U. C., Achtziger, A., Gollwitzer, P. M., & Moskowitz, G. (2009). Responding to
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conscious intent? Social Cognition, 27, 183–201.
Bayer, U. C., & Gollwitzer, P. M. (2007). Boosting scholastic test scores by willpower:
The role of implementation intentions. Self and Identity, 6, 1–19.
Bayer, U. C., Gollwitzer, P. M., & Achtziger, A. (2010). Staying on track: Planned goal
striving is protected from disruptive internal states. Journal of Experimental Social
Psychology, 146, 505–514.
Brandstätter, V., Lengfelder, A., & Gollwitzer, P. M. (2001). Implementation intentions and efficient action initiation. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 81,
946–960.
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Cohen, A.-L., Bayer, U. C., Jaudas, A., & Gollwitzer, P. M. (2008). Self-regulatory strategy and executive control: Implementation intentions modulate task switching
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Duckworth, A. L., Grant, H., Loew, B., Oettingen, G., & Gollwitzer, P. M. (2011).
Self-regulation strategies improve self-discipline in adolescents: Benefits of
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Gawrilow, C., & Gollwitzer, P. M. (2008). Implementation intentions facilitate
response inhibition in children with ADHD. Cognitive Therapy and Research, 32,
261–280.
Gawrilow, C., Gollwitzer, P. M., & Oettingen, G. (2011). If-then plans benefit delay of
gratification performance in children with and without ADHD. Cognitive Therapy
and Research, 35, 442–455.
Gilbert, S. J., Gollwitzer, P. M., Cohen, A.-L., Oettingen, G., & Burgess, P. W.
(2009). Separable brain systems supporting cued versus self-initiated realization of
delayed intentions. Journal of Experimental Psychology: Learning, Memory, and Cognition, 35, 905–915.
Gollwitzer, P. M. (1993). Goal achievement: The role of intentions. European Review of
Social Psychology, 4, 141–185.
Gollwitzer, P. M. (1999). Implementation intentions: Strong effects of simple plans.
American Psychologist, 54, 493–503.
Gollwitzer, P. M. (2014). Weakness of the will: Is a quick fix possible? Motivation and
Emotion, 1–18.
Gollwitzer, P. M., & Brandstätter, V. (1997). Implementation intentions and effective
goal striving. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 73, 186–199.
Gollwitzer, P. M., & Oettingen, G. (2011). Planning promotes goal striving. In K. D.
Vohs & R. F. Baumeister (Eds.), Handbook of self-regulation: Research, theory, and applications (2nd ed., pp. 162–185). New York, NY: Guilford.
Gollwitzer, P. M., & Schaal, B. (1998). Metacognition in action: The importance of
implementation intentions. Personality and Social Psychology Review, 2, 124–136.
Gollwitzer, P. M., & Sheeran, P. (2006). Implementation intentions and goal achievement: A meta-analysis of effects and processes. Advances in Experimental Social
Psychology, 38, 69–119.
Gollwitzer, P. M., Sheeran, P., Trötschel, R., & Webb, T. (2011). Self-regulation of
behavioral priming effects. Psychological Science, 22, 901–907.
Henderson, M. D., Gollwitzer, P. M., & Oettingen, G. (2007). Implementation intentions and disengagement from a failing course of action. Journal of Behavioral Decision Making, 20, 81–102.
Kirk, D., Gollwitzer, P. M., & Carnevale, P. J. (2011). Self-regulation in ultimatum
bargaining: Goals and plans help accepting unfair but profitable offers. Social Cognition, 29, 528–546.
Kirk, D., Oettingen, G., & Gollwitzer, P. M. (2013). Promoting integrative bargaining:
Mental contrasting with implementation intentions. International Journal of Conflict
Management, 24, 148–165.
Mendoza, S. A., Gollwitzer, P. M., & Amodio, D. M. (2010). Reducing the expression of implicit stereotypes: Reflexive control through implementation intentions.
Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin, 36, 512–523.
Milkman, K. L., Beshears, J., Choi, J. J., Laibson, D., & Madrian, B. C. (2011). Using
implementation intentions prompts to enhance influenza vaccination rates. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, 108, 10415–10420.
Muraven, M., & Baumeister, R. F. (2000). Self-regulation and depletion of limited
resources: Does self-control resemble a muscle? Psychological Bulletin, 126, 247–259.

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Oettingen, G. (2012). Future thought and behavior change. European Review of Social
Psychology, 23, 1–63.
Oettingen, G., Pak, H., & Schnetter, K. (2001). Self-regulation of goal setting: Turning
free fantasies about the future into binding goals. Journal of Personality and Social
Psychology, 80, 736–753.
Papies, E., Aarts, H., & de Vries, N. K. (2009). Grounding your plans: Implementation
intentions go beyond the mere creation of goal-directed associations. Journal of
Experimental Social Psychology, 45, 1148–1151.
Parks-Stamm, E. J., Gollwitzer, P. M., & Oettingen, G. (2007). Action control by
implementation intentions: Effective cue detection and efficient response initiation. Social Cognition, 25, 248–266.
Przybylinski, E., & Andersen, S. M. (2013). Short-circuiting transference using implementation intentions. Journal of Experimental Social Psychology, 49(3), 566–572.
Schweiger Gallo, I., Keil, A., McCulloch, K. C., Rockstroh, B., & Gollwitzer, P. M.
(2009). Strategic automation of emotion regulation. Journal of Personality and Social
Psychology, 96, 11–31.
Sheeran, P. (2002). Intention-behavior relations: A conceptual and empirical review.
European Review of Social Psychology, 12, 1–30.
Sheeran, P., Webb, T. L., & Gollwitzer, P. M. (2005). The interplay between goal intentions and implementation intentions. Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin, 31,
87–98.
Stadler, G., Oettingen, G., & Gollwitzer, P. M. (2009). Physical activity in women.
Effects of a self-regulation intervention. American Journal of Preventive Medicine,
36, 29–34.
Stadler, G., Oettingen, G., & Gollwitzer, P. M. (2010). Intervention effects of information and self-regulation on eating fruits and vegetables over two years. Health
Psychology, 29, 274–283.
Stern, C., & West, T. V. (2014). Circumventing anxiety during interpersonal encounters to promote interest in contact: An implementation intention approach. Journal
of Experimental Social Psychology, 50, 82–93.
Stewart, B. D., & Payne, B. K. (2008). Bringing automatic stereotyping under control:
Implementation intentions as efficient means of thought control. Personality and
Social Psychology Bulletin, 34, 1332–1345.
Trötschel, R., & Gollwitzer, P. M. (2007). Implementation intentions and the willful
pursuit of prosocial goals in negotiations. Journal of Experimental Social Psychology,
43, 579–589.
Webb, T. L., & Sheeran, P. (2003). Can implementation intentions help to overcome
ego-depletion. Journal of Experimental Social Psychology, 39, 279–286.
Webb, T. L., & Sheeran, P. (2008). Mechanisms of implementation intention effects:
The role of goal intentions, self-efficacy, and accessibility of plan components.
British Journal of Social Psychology, 47, 373–395.
Wieber, F., Gollwitzer, P. M., & Sheeran, P. (2013). Strategic regulation of mimicry
effects by implementation intentions. Journal of Experimental Social Psychology, 53,
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Wieber, F., Thürmer, J. L., & Gollwitzer, P. M. (2013). Intentional action control in
individuals and groups. In G. Seebaß, M. Schmitz & P. M. Gollwitzer (Eds.), Acting intentionally and its limits: Individuals, groups, institutions (pp. 133–162). Berlin,
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Psychological Review, 114, 842–862.

PETER M. GOLLWITZER SHORT BIOGRAPHY
Peter M. Gollwitzer is a Professor of Psychology at the Psychology
Department of New York University. Throughout his academic career, he
has developed various models of action control: the Theory of Symbolic
Self-Completion (with Robert A. Wicklund), the Mindset Model of Action
Phases (with Heinz Heckhausen), the Auto-Motive Model of Automatic Goal
Striving (with John A. Bargh), and the Theory of Intentional Action Control
(that makes a distinction between goal intentions and implementation
intentions). In all of these models, various mechanisms of behavior change
are delineated and respective moderators and mediators are distilled. His
recent research uses insights on action control by if-then planning to develop
powerful time and cost effective behavior change interventions; this work
is rooted in the mental contrasting theory of goal pursuit as proposed by
Gabriele Oettingen.
http://www.psych.nyu.edu/gollwitzer/

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Setting One’s Mind on Action:
Planning Out Goal Striving in
Advance
PETER M. GOLLWITZER

Abstract
Ineffective goal striving may be overcome using a simple self-regulation strategy:
preparing goal striving in advance by forming implementation intentions (i.e.,
making if-then plans). This strategy helps to cope with the classic challenges to
goal striving: getting started, staying on track, not overextending oneself, and
disengaging from faulty means. Interestingly, these beneficial effects are observed
no matter whether hindrances from within (e.g., ego depletion) or outside (e.g.,
social influence) the person are to be dealt with. In this essay, the processes on which
the beneficial effects of implementation intentions are based will be discussed by
pointing to relevant research using cognitive task paradigms and assessing brain
data. Moreover, recent findings are reported demonstrating that implementation
intentions can be used to curb reflexive cognitive, affective, and behavioral responses
that interfere with a person’s focal goal pursuit. In closing this essay, a behavior
change intervention (i.e., mental contrasting with implementation intentions) is
introduced that establishes the prerequisites for implementation intention effects
to occur, and research areas in psychology are pointed to that could benefit from
conducting implementation intention research.

SETTING ONE’S MIND ON ACTION: PLANNING OUT GOAL
STRIVING IN ADVANCE
Being strongly committed to a goal is a necessary but often not sufficient step
toward goal attainment as the way to the goal may be cobbled with difficulties, hindrances, and set-backs (Bargh, Gollwitzer, & Oettingen, 2010). The
problems of goal implementation that people are most frequently confronted
with are the following: people may fail to get started with goal striving, fail
to stay on track when goal striving has been started, overextend with striving for the goal at hand thus losing sight of goals in other equally important
life domains, and finally, people may fail to disengage from an unattainable
goals or futile means. In fact, meta-analytic findings suggest that goals (also
Emerging Trends in the Social and Behavioral Sciences. Edited by Robert Scott and Stephen Kosslyn.
© 2015 John Wiley & Sons, Inc. ISBN 978-1-118-90077-2.

1

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EMERGING TRENDS IN THE SOCIAL AND BEHAVIORAL SCIENCES

referred to as goal intentions as goals can be understood as instructions people give themselves to perform a certain behavior or to achieve a certain
outcome) account for no more than 28% of variance in goal-directed behavior (Sheeran, 2002). An effective remedy to such impaired goal striving is
planning out in advance how one wants to deal with the critical situations
described earlier (i.e., furnishing one’s goal intentions with implementation
intentions).
Gollwitzer (1993, 1999) highlighted the importance of furnishing goal
intentions with implementation intentions. While goal intentions (goals)
have the structure of “I intend to reach X!” with X relating to a desired future
behavior or outcome, implementation intentions have the structure of “If
situation Y is encountered, then I will perform the goal-directed response Z!”
Thus, implementation intentions define exactly when, where, and how one
wants to act to realize one’s goal intentions. In order to form an implementation intention, individuals need to identify a goal-relevant situational cue
(such as a good opportunity to act or an obstacle to goal pursuit) and link it to
an instrumental goal-directed response. While goal intentions merely specify
a desired future behavior or outcome, the if-component of an implementation intention specifies when and where one wants to act on this goal (i.e., a
certain situation), and the then-component of the implementation intention
specifies the response that is to be initiated. For instance, a person who
wants to complete a writing project (goal intention) might form the following
implementation intention to support the attainment of her goal: “And whenever I sit down at my desktop computer, then I will immediately continue
with writing on my manuscript!” Extensive empirical research supports
the assumption that implementation intentions help close the gap between
holding goals and attaining them, and this is true for all kind of goals in the
academic, health, and interpersonal domains. A meta-analysis published in
2006 based on close to a hundred implementation intention studies showed
a medium to large effect on increased rate of goal attainment (d = 0.61;
Gollwitzer & Sheeran, 2006).
IMPLEMENTATION INTENTIONS AS A MEANS TO OVERCOME
TYPICAL PROBLEMS OF GOAL STRIVING
Implementation intentions were found to help individuals getting started with
goal striving in terms of remembering to act (e.g., taking a flu shot; Milkman,
Beshears, Choi, Laibson, & Madrian, 2011) and overcoming an initial reluctance to act (e.g., with respect to undertaking a testicular self-examination,
performing cervical cancer screening, resuming activity after joint replacement surgery, starting to eat a low-fat diet, and engaging in more physical
exercise; summary by Gollwitzer, 2014).

Setting One’s Mind on Action: Planning Out Goal Striving in Advance

3

However, many such goals (e.g., to eat a low-fat diet) cannot be accomplished by a discrete, one-shot action because they require that people keep
striving over an extended period of time. Staying on track may then become
very difficult when certain internal stimuli (e.g., being anxious and overburdened) or external stimuli (e.g., temptations and distractions) interfere.
However, implementation intentions can be used to protect an ongoing goal
striving from the negative influence of interferences from both inside and
outside the person (e.g., Achtziger, Gollwitzer, & Sheeran, 2008). Such implementation intentions may use very different formats. For instance, if a teacher
wants to stay friendly to a student who keeps making outrageous requests,
she can form suppression-oriented implementation intentions, such as “And
if the student approaches me with an outrageous request, then I will not get
upset!” The then-component of such suppression-oriented implementation
intentions does not have to be worded in terms of not showing (i.e., negating)
the critical behavior (in the present example getting upset); it may alternatively specify a replacement behavior (“ … , then I will respond in a friendly
manner!”), or focus on ignoring the critical cue (“ … , then I’ll ignore her
request!”). Recent research (Adriaanse, Van Oosten, De Ridder, De Wit, &
Evers, 2011) suggests that negation implementation intentions are less effective than the latter two types of implementation intentions (i.e., replacement
and ignore implementation intentions). However, an important alternative
way of using implementation intentions to protect one’s ongoing goal striving from derailment exists. One can also form implementation intentions
geared toward stabilizing the ongoing focal goal pursuit (e.g., when I have
finished the first part of the task at hand, then I will immediately turn to
the second part). Bayer, Gollwitzer, and Achtziger (2010) demonstrated the
effectiveness of this strategy in a series of studies analyzing whether making
if-then plans that stabilize an ongoing goal pursuit effectively blocked the
disruptive effects of self-doubts, inappropriate mood, and ego-depletion.
Goals that are no longer feasible and/or desirable in their current form may
require disengaging from a chosen means or goals. Such disengagement from
dysfunctional means or unattainable goals can free up resources and minimize negative affect (frustration) resulting from repeated negative feedback.
However, because of self-defensiveness individuals often stick to a chosen
means or goal too long thus ultimately hurting themselves. Luckily, implementation intentions can be used to promote functional disengagement by
specifying negative performance feedback as a critical cue, and linking this
cue to switching to an alternative goal or means. Indeed, when research participants were asked to form implementation intentions that linked negative
feedback on the ongoing goal striving to immediately switching to a different
means or goal or to reflecting on the message entailed by the received failure
feedback on the ongoing goal striving, functional disengagement from goals

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EMERGING TRENDS IN THE SOCIAL AND BEHAVIORAL SCIENCES

and means was found to occur more frequently than for participants who
had only formed respective goal intentions or had formed no intentions at
all (Henderson, Gollwitzer, & Oettingen, 2007).
Finally, forming implementation intentions can help preventing resource
depletion as it enables individuals to engage in automated goal striving
and behavior control that does not require high levels of deliberate effort
(see the following text). Consequently, the self should not become depleted
(Muraven & Baumeister, 2000) when goal striving is regulated by implementation intentions. Indeed, in studies using ego-depletion paradigms,
research participants who formed implementation intentions to self-regulate
performance on a first task did not show reduced self-regulatory capacity
when asked to start working on a different subsequent task (e.g., Webb &
Sheeran, 2003).
PROCESS EXPLANATION: AUTOMATIC ACTION INITIATION
Research on the underlying mechanisms of implementation intention effects
(summary by Gollwitzer & Oettingen, 2011) has discovered that implementation intentions facilitate goal attainment on the basis of psychological mechanisms that relate to the anticipated situation (specified in the if-part of the
plan), and the mental link created between the if-part and the then-part of the
plan. Because forming an implementation intention implies the selection of
a critical future situation, the mental representation of this situation becomes
highly activated and hence more accessible. This heightened accessibility of
the if-part of the plan has been observed in several studies using different
cognitive task paradigms (e.g., cue detection, flanker, dichotic listening, lexical decision, and cued recall task paradigms). In a study by Parks-Stamm,
Gollwitzer, and Oettingen (2007) using a lexical decision task paradigm, it
was even observed that implementation intentions not only increase the activation level of the specified critical cues but also diminish the activation level
of nonspecified competing situational cues. There are also studies that explicitly tested whether the heightened accessibility of the mental representation
of critical cues that are specified in an implementation intention mediated the
attainment of the respective goal intention. For instance, Aarts, Dijksterhuis,
and Midden (1999), using a lexical decision task, found that the formation of
implementation intentions led to faster lexical decision times for those words
that described the specified critical situation. Furthermore, the heightened
accessibility of the critical situation (as measured by faster lexical decision
responses) mediated the beneficial effects of implementation intentions on
goal attainment.
Further studies indicated that forming implementation intentions not only
heightens the activation level of the mental presentation of the situational

Setting One’s Mind on Action: Planning Out Goal Striving in Advance

5

cues specified in the if-component but also creates a strong associative link
between the mental representation of the specified opportunity and the mental representation of the specified response. These associative links seem to
be quite stable over time (Papies, Aarts, & de Vries, 2009). In mediation analyses, it was found that cue accessibility and the strength of the cue-response
link conjointly mediated the impact of implementation intention formation
on goal attainment (Webb & Sheeran, 2008).
Gollwitzer (1999) argued that the strong associative (critical situation
with goal-directed response) links created by forming implementation
intentions should lead to automatic action initiation once the critical cue
is encountered. Indeed, extensive experimental research found that the
initiation of the goal-directed responses specified in the then-component of
implementation intentions did exhibit features of automaticity, including
immediacy, efficiency, and no conscious involvement (in the sense that no
conscious self-instruction to act is needed). If-then planners were found to
act more quickly (e.g., Gollwitzer & Brandstätter, 1997, Experiment 3), to
deal more effectively with cognitive demands (i.e., the speed-up effects still
evinced under high cognitive load; Brandstätter, Lengfelder, & Gollwitzer,
2001), and they did not need to consciously intend to act in the critical
moment. Consistent with this last assumption, implementation intention
effects are observed even when the critical cue was presented subliminally
(e.g., Bayer, Achtziger, Gollwitzer, & Moskowitz, 2009).
Further support for the hypothesis that action control by implementation
intentions qualifies as automatic was obtained in an fMRI study reported
by Gilbert, Gollwitzer, Cohen, Oettingen, and Burgess (2009), in which participants had to perform a prospective memory task (i.e., degree of acting
on a prospective stimulus is assessed) on the basis of either mere goal or
goal plus implementation intention instructions. Acting on the basis of goal
intentions was associated with brain activity in the lateral rostral prefrontal
cortex, whereas acting on the basis of implementation intentions was associated with brain activity in the medial rostral prefrontal cortex. Brain activity
in the latter area is known to be associated with bottom-up (stimulus) control
of action, whereas brain activity in the former area is known to be related to
top-down (goal) control of action (Burgess, Dumontheil, & Gilbert, 2007).
THE POWER OF PLANNING
Any self-regulation strategy that claims to facilitate goal striving has to
prove itself under conditions in which people commonly fail to meet their
goals. Such conditions are manifold, but the following three situations
stick out: (i) situations in which a person’s knowledge and skills constrain
performance, such as taking difficult academic tests; (2) situations in which

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EMERGING TRENDS IN THE SOCIAL AND BEHAVIORAL SCIENCES

an opponent’s behavior limits one’s performance, as is true for competitive
performance settings; and (3) situations in which the wanted behavior
(e.g., no littering) runs into conflict with reflexive antagonistic responses
(i.e., habitual littering). For all three of these situations, implementation
intentions, however, stood their test.
As to situations where knowledge and skills constrain performance and
thus willpower is needed to persist on the challenging task at hand, simple
implementation intentions were found to enhance participants’ performance
on a standardized intelligence test. Participants only had to form the following implementation intention: “Whenever I start a new problem on this
test, then I will tell myself: I can solve this problem!” (Bayer & Gollwitzer,
2007). As to situations where an opponent limits one’s performance, studies
in which pairs of negotiators had to distribute a common resource were conducted (Trötschel & Gollwitzer, 2007). In these studies, negotiators played the
roles of representatives of two neighboring countries and negotiated the distribution of the regions, villages, and towns of a disputed island. When the
participants formed implementation intentions to make cooperative counterproposals whenever a proposal from the counterpart was received, the pairs
of negotiators managed to be more cooperative even when the negotiation
had to take place under a loss frame (i.e., participants are told how many
points they lose rather than win during each round of negotiation and are
thus reluctant to make concessions). Apparently, implementation intentions
managed to break the competiveness enhancing the effect of loss framing.
Recent research using the ultimatum game also showed that implementation intentions can help performance in the face of opponents. Impulsive
rejections of unfair offers at a cost to oneself were successfully curbed by making if-then plans geared toward down-regulating anger (Kirk, Gollwitzer, &
Carnevale, 2011).
Finally, as to situations where a desired behavior is in conflict with an
antagonistic reflexive response a host of studies has been conducted as well.
The self-regulation of an ongoing goal pursuit becomes particularly difficult
when reflexive responses are in conflict with initiating and executing the
needed goal-directed responses that are instrumental to goal attainment
(Wood & Neal, 2007). Can the self-regulation strategy of forming if-then plans
help people to let their goals win out over their habitual reflexive responses?
By assuming that action control by implementation intentions is immediate
and efficient, and adopting a simple horserace model of action control
(Adriaanse, Gollwitzer, De Ridder, De Wit, & Kroese, 2011), people should
be in a position to break habitual responses by forming implementation
intentions that spell out a response contrary to the habitual response to the
critical situation. This assumption has been tested by analyzing the control
of various kinds of reflexive responses: cognitive, affective, and behavioral.

Setting One’s Mind on Action: Planning Out Goal Striving in Advance

7

Automatic biases, such as stereotyping, represent a reflexive cognitive
response that can be in opposition to one’s fairness goals. Extending earlier
work by Gollwitzer and Schaal (1998); Stewart and Payne (2008) found
that implementation intentions designed to counter automatic stereotypes
(e.g., “When I see a black face, I will then think ‘safe’!”) could indeed
reduce automatic stereotyping. Research by Mendoza, Gollwitzer, and
Amodio (2010) using the so-called shooter task paradigm has added to these
findings by showing that the down-regulation of automatic stereotyping by
implementation intentions has the desired behavioral consequences.
With respect to reflexive affective responses, a study by Schweiger Gallo, Keil,
McCulloch, Rockstroh, and Gollwitzer (2009, Study 3) using dense-array
EEG showed that implementation intentions specifying an ignore-response
in the then-component of an implementation intention helped control fear
in response to pictures of spiders in participants with spider phobia (who
are known to reflexively show fear responses when confronted with spider
pictures). Importantly, the obtained electro-cortical correlates revealed that
those participants who bolstered their goal intention to stay calm with an
ignore implementation intention showed significantly reduced early activity
in the visual cortex in response to spider pictures, as reflected in a smaller
P1 (assessed at 120 ms after a spider picture had been presented). This EEG
finding suggests that implementation intentions indeed lead to strategic
automation of the specified goal-directed response (an ignore response)
when the critical cue (a spider picture) is encountered, as conscious effortful
action initiation is known to take longer than 120 ms (at least 300 ms).
Apparently, this strategically automated ignore-response managed to
outrun the reflexive fear response that characterizes individuals with spider
phobia.
Finally, with respect to reflexive behavioral responses, Cohen, Bayer, Jaudas,
and Gollwitzer (2008, Study 2) demonstrated that implementation intentions
help suppressing habitual behavioral responses in a Simon classification
task. For this task, it is found that classifying stimuli (e.g., low vs high tones)
with the hand that corresponds to the location of the presented stimulus
(e.g., low tones presented on the left side with the left hand and high tones
presented on the right side with the right hand) is faster than classifying
them with the noncorresponding hand (e.g., low tones presented on the left
side with the right hand and high tones presented on the right side with the
left hand). Specifying a noncorresponding response in an implementation
intention that is geared toward fast responding did effectively alleviate
the comparative disadvantage (reduced speed) of classifications made by
the noncorresponding hand. Moreover, implementation intentions were
found to help people to control behavioral priming effects (Gollwitzer,
Sheeran, Trötschel, & Webb, 2011) and break bad snacking habits Adriaanse,

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EMERGING TRENDS IN THE SOCIAL AND BEHAVIORAL SCIENCES

Gollwitzer, et al., 2011). Finally, in studies with children with ADHD, it
was observed that implementation intentions can help to inhibit overlearned responses (Gawrilow & Gollwitzer, 2008) and to slow impulsive
responses in a delay of gratification task (Gawrilow, Gollwitzer, & Oettingen,
2011).
Still, forming implementation intentions may not always block reflexive
responses. Whether the reflexive response or the if-then guided response
will “win the race” depends on the relative strength of the two behavioral
orientations. If the reflexive response is based on strong habits, and the
if-then guided response is based on weak implementation intentions, the
reflexive response should win over the if-then planned response; and
the reverse should be true when weak habits are in conflict with strong
implementation intentions. This implies that controlling behavior based on
strong habits requires the formation of strong implementation intentions.
Such enhancement of if-then plans can be achieved by various measures.
One pertains to creating particularly strong links between situational
cues (if-component) and goal-directed responses (then-component) for
instance by asking participants to use mental imagery. Alternatively, people
can tailor the critical cue specified in the if-part of an implementation
intention to personally relevant reasons for the habitual behavior one
wants to overcome and then link this cue to an antagonistic response.
In addition, certain formats of implementation intentions (i.e., replacement and ignore implementation intentions) seem to be more effective
in fighting habits than others (i.e., negation implementation intentions).
Moreover, there is also the option of forming an implementation intention that targets the elicitation of a reflective mindset when the critical
situation is encountered; this mindset should be incompatible with automatic responding and thus hamper reflexive responses (see Gollwitzer,
2014).

FUTURE RESEARCH ON IMPLEMENTATION INTENTIONS
One avenue for future research on implementation intentions is using them
to enrich behavior change interventions. Implementation intentions are
known to unfold their beneficial effects in particular when goal commitment
and implementation intention commitment is high (Achtziger, Bayer, &
Gollwitzer, 2011; Sheeran, Webb, & Gollwitzer, 2005, Study 2). Accordingly,
behavior change interventions involving implementation intentions need to
assure these prerequisites. One intervention that does this very effectively is
called mental contrasting (Oettingen, 2012). Engaging in mental contrasting
(Oettingen, Pak, & Schnetter, 2001) requires from participants to juxtapose

Setting One’s Mind on Action: Planning Out Goal Striving in Advance

9

fantasies about desired future outcomes with obstacles of present reality.
This mental exercise not only creates strong goal commitments but also
guarantees the identification of personally relevant obstacles that can then
be specified as the critical cues in the if-component of implementation intentions; moreover, mental contrasting has been found to create a readiness for
making plans that link obstacles to instrumental behaviors. Recent intervention research has combined mental contrasting with forming implementation
intentions (i.e., created MCII). MCII intervention studies observed lasting
behavior change with regard to physical exercise and healthy eating (4
months to 2 years, respectively; Stadler, Oettingen, & Gollwitzer, 2009, 2010).
In addition, MCII helped to control the negative eating habit of unhealthy
snacking in college students (Adriaanse, Oettingen, et al., 2010). Here, MCII
worked for both students with weak and strong such habits, and it was
more effective than either mental contrasting or forming implementation
intentions alone. Finally, MCII has been found to have beneficial effects
outside of the health domain as well. For example, it benefited study efforts
in adolescents preparing for standardized tests (Duckworth, Grant, Loew,
Oettingen, & Gollwitzer, 2011) and promoted integrative bargaining in
dyads negotiating over the sale of a car (Kirk, Oettingen, & Gollwitzer,
2013).
Another new line of implementation intention research pertains to the use
of implementation intentions in groups. The questions addressed in this
research are twofold: First, it is asked whether individual group members
can use implementation intentions to promote collaboration and thus
improve group performance. Second, it is asked whether groups can also
use We-implementation intentions (If we encounter … , then we will … !) to
promote group performance, and which type of implementation intention
(I- vs We-Implementation Intentions) is more conducive to promoting
the various types of group performance (Wieber, Thürmer, & Gollwitzer,
2013).
A final new line of implementation intention research pertains to facilitating social interactions. For instance, Stern and West (2014) report that
implementation intentions specifying how to act when feeling anxious
boosts interest in sustained contact and close interpersonal distance in
interracial interactions. Moreover, it was demonstrated by Przybylinski and
Andersen (2013) that transference (which is known to run off outside of conscious awareness and often affects ongoing social interactions negatively)
can be effectively prevented using implementation intentions. And finally,
Wieber, Gollwitzer, and Sheeran (2013) found that mimicry effects on social
interactions are controllable by forming implementation intentions—even
though people are not usually aware of the influences that mimicry exerts
on their judgments and behavior.

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EMERGING TRENDS IN THE SOCIAL AND BEHAVIORAL SCIENCES

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PETER M. GOLLWITZER SHORT BIOGRAPHY
Peter M. Gollwitzer is a Professor of Psychology at the Psychology
Department of New York University. Throughout his academic career, he
has developed various models of action control: the Theory of Symbolic
Self-Completion (with Robert A. Wicklund), the Mindset Model of Action
Phases (with Heinz Heckhausen), the Auto-Motive Model of Automatic Goal
Striving (with John A. Bargh), and the Theory of Intentional Action Control
(that makes a distinction between goal intentions and implementation
intentions). In all of these models, various mechanisms of behavior change
are delineated and respective moderators and mediators are distilled. His
recent research uses insights on action control by if-then planning to develop
powerful time and cost effective behavior change interventions; this work
is rooted in the mental contrasting theory of goal pursuit as proposed by
Gabriele Oettingen.
http://www.psych.nyu.edu/gollwitzer/

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