Implementation Intentions Do Not Enhance All Types of ... - CiteSeerX

Dewitte, Verguts, and Lens

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Implementation Intentions Do Not Enhance All Types of Goals: The Moderating Role of Goal Difficulty SIEGFRIED DEWITTE Catholic University of Leuven, Belgium TOM VERGUTS University of Gent WILLY LENS Catholic University of Leuven, Belgium Three studies tested whether Gollwitzer and Brandstätter’s (1997) failure to find an implementation effect for easy goals was due to a ceiling effect, to the moderating effect of previously formed habits, or to a moderating effect of earlier implementation intentions. The studies strongly indicated that easy goals did benefit from forming implementation intentions (i.e., specifying where or when one would perform the action). This suggests that Gollwitzer and Brandstätter’s failure to find significant implementation effects for easy goals was due to a ceiling effect and not to other moderating effects. However, in the three experiments, we found no positive effect of implementation intentions for the enactment of goal-related behavior corresponding to a certain type of difficult goal. More specifically, when the focus was on the outcome of goal-directed action rather than on the goal-directed actions themselves, implementation intentions specifying when or in what conditions the relevant actions were to be performed did not enhance enactment. When the focus was on the goal-directed actions, we replicated the positive effect of forming implementation intentions. We argue that specifying when or where a goal-directed action should be enacted does not enhance enactment when the actor is not aware of the actions that are required to reach the goal. Possibly, implementation intentions specifying what one should do (rather than where or when) might be more helpful to enhance enactment rates of this type of goal.

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eople often realize that they forgot to do what they intended to. This is often embarrassing, and the awareness is often accompanied by a feeling of distress. Although many people know that planning enhances performance, they often do not plan, probably because planning requires effort, or because they do not know how to make good plans. Recently, the processes underlying planning have begun to be uncovered. Gollwitzer and colleagues (1993, 1996, 1999; Gollwitzer & Brandstätter, 1997; Orbell, Hodgkins, & Sheeran, 1997; Sheeran & Orbell, 1999; Verplanken, Aarts, van

Current Psychology: Developmental, Learning, Personality, Social. Spring 2003, Vol. 22, No. 1, pp. 7389.

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Current Psychology / Spring 2003

Knippenberg, & Moonen, 1998; Verplanken & Faes, 1999) empirically established and fine-tuned the assumption that planning an action increases the likelihood that it is eventually performed. In this research tradition, goals that are not planned yet are called goal intentions and refer to an endstate or an outcome (e.g., I wish to reach x). Goals that are planned are called implementation intentions. They refer to the intended action, as well as to the situational circumstances (including temporal cues) in which the intended action will be performed (e.g., when I encounter situation y, I will perform behavior x). The planning process reflects the transition from goal intentions to implementation intentions. Implementation intentions not only refer to the action, but also to the situation in which the action should be enacted. Gollwitzer (1993; see also Gollwitzer & Brandstätter, 1997) showed that when people received an instruction to write a report on how they spent Christmas eve, those who had to furnish this instruction with situational cues (i.e., who had to formulate an implementation intention) were much more likely to enact their intention than those who had merely received the instruction. This finding has been replicated with several other types of actions, such as striving for self-set goals (Gollwitzer & Brandstätter, 1997), repetitive breast self-examinations (Orbell, Hodgkins, & Sheeran, 1997), vitamin intake (Sheeran & Orbell, 1998), and healthy diet (Verplanken & Faes, 1999). Gollwitzer (1999) explained the effect of forming implementation intentions in terms of an “instant habit.” This term refers to the postulated S-R link between the situational cues and the reaction. This tie results from verbally linking the situational circumstances to the required actions before the situation is actually encountered. When it is encountered later on, the situational cue is automatically processed and is believed to facilitate the action. Although the positive effects of forming implementation intentions are impressive (for an overview, see Gollwitzer, 1999), several effects that moderate the relation between implementation intentions and enactment rates have been identified. For instance, commitment to the goal facilitates the effect of implementation intentions (Orbell et al., 1997; Seehausen, Bayer, & Gollwitzer, 1994, in Gollwitzer, 1996; Verplanken et al., 1998; for an overview of other moderating effects, see Gollwitzer, 1999). One of the moderating effects we will explore here is that of difficulty. Gollwitzer and Brandstätter (1997, exp. 1) found that when people had to generate both a difficult and an easy project they wanted to engage in during the Christmas break, implementation intentions only enhanced the enactment of the difficult projects, but not that of the easy projects. For the difficult projects, the execution rate increased from 22% to 62% when the participants had turned their project into an implementation intention. However, for easy projects, the execution rate increased from 78% to only 84%. Gollwitzer and Brandstätter (1997) provided two possible explanations for the moderating effect of difficulty on the efficacy of implementation intentions. The first explanation for the interaction might be a ceiling effect. That is, personal control is never perfect due to social obligations, physical constraints, competing goals, and so on. Therefore, an enactment rate of 100% is unrealistic, even for easy goals. So, 80% might be the upper limit of intention enactment. Thus, when participants generate goal-directed


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behaviors with an enactment rate of 80% even without forming implementation intentions, an additional effect of planning is unlikely. The second explanation Gollwitzer and Brandstätter (1997) provided for their failure to find an implementation intention effect for easy goals was one in terms of habit strength. Specifically, easy goals were found to require less complex and more habitual and familiar actions. Thus, when the process of forming implementation intentions reflects the creation of instant habits, this process will not be effective when there was already a habit to perform the action. The explanation in terms of habits is also in line with the fact that in several studies, implementation effects have been found for easy goals that were provided by the experimenter. For instance, although taking vitamin pills is not particularly difficult in itself, this behavior has been shown to benefit dramatically from forming implementation intentions (Sheeran & Orbell, 1999). This indicates that formulating implementation intentions might also enhance the enactment of easy actions, provided that they are not habitual. If this explanation is valid, then one should expect the same interaction as Gollwitzer and Brandstätter (1997) found when the ceiling effect is controlled for. In addition, there might be a third explanation in terms of previous implementation intentions. Easy goals may have been fully specified before, more often than difficult goals. That is, goals that are considered easy to reach might refer to implementation intentions, whereas difficult goals might rather represent goal intentions or desired outcomes. Moreover, having an implementation intention might affect the perception of difficulty. When the person already knows how the goal will be reached, the goal might appear easier. The third explanation resembles Gollwitzer and Brandstätter’s (1997) one in terms of habit, but diverges from it because it does not imply that the actions that correspond to the easy goals are habits. We attempted to test these three possible explanations of Gollwitzer and Brandstätter’s failure to find an effect of formulating implementation intentions in the following way. To control for the ceiling effect, we let the participants generate several goals instead of one easy and one difficult one, as did Gollwitzer and Brandstätter. When asked to give only one easy goal, the goal that is generated is likely to be among the easiest goals the person has set for him- or herself. However, when one has to generate several easy goals, one might expect a lower base-line enactment rate to begin with. If the explanation in terms of a ceiling effect is valid, then forming implementation intentions should not only enhance the enactment rate of difficult goals, but also that of easy ones. In contrast, if the explanation in terms of a habit is valid, then forming implementation intentions should enhance the enactment of difficult goals only and not that of easy ones. To test the third explanation in terms of previously formulated implementation intentions, we manipulated the focus the participants had during the generation of their goals. The focus may be either on the actions that are required to reach the goal or on the outcomes (i.e., the goal) of the actions. The focus was manipulated as follows. The participants were asked to generate future actions (focus on the action) vs. goals (focus on the outcome). The distinction between an action-focus and an outcome-focus is closely related to the distinction between implementation intentions and goal intentions. That is, implementation intentions refer to actions, whereas goal intentions refer to

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outcomes. Therefore, it is likely that with a focus on actions, participants are more likely to generate intentions that have been specified to some degree than when they focus on outcomes and vice versa. Thus, if the failure to increase the enactment of easy goals is due to the presence of implementation intentions prior to the study, then “actions” will benefit less from formulating implementation intentions than “goals.” We will refer to this manipulation as “Focus.” STUDY 1 There were three independent variables: Difficulty of the intention, Focus (action or outcome) and Implementation intention (present or absent). First, the ceiling effect hypothesis predicts that easy intentions are so easy that they have a maximal enactment rate, irrespective of whether or not they are turned into implementation intentions (Gollwitzer & Brandstätter, 1997). If this holds, then easy intentions will benefit from forming implementation intentions, provided that the base-line enactment rate of easy goals is considerably lower than say 85% (see Gollwitzer & Brandstätter, exp. 1). To decrease base-line enactment rate, participants were asked to generate several goals. Second, easy intentions might imply habitual actions. This would preclude the possibility that formulating implementation intentions would enhance performance (Gollwitzer & Brandstätter, 1997). Specifically, if implementation intentions are instant habits, then they cannot add strength to habitual behavior. In this case, forming implementation intentions of habitual intentions will not raise enactment rates up to their maximum when the base-line is lower than the maximal enactment rate (about 85%). This prediction is opposite to that derived from the ceiling-effect hypothesis. Third, easy intentions might have been turned into implementation intentions to a larger extent than have difficult goals and instructions. Therefore, expected actions, irrespective of their ease, should benefit less from implementation intentions than goals (which stress outcomes). This hypothesis predicts a three-way interaction between formulating Implementation intentions, Focus on the action vs. on the outcome, and Difficulty. That is, formulating implementation intentions should only enhance the enactment of actions leading to difficult goals, and not those leading to easy goals, nor that of expected actions. In sum, a main effect of forming implementation intentions across all conditions would support the ceiling effect hypothesis. An interaction between Difficulty and forming Implementation intentions would support the habit hypothesis. The two latter expectations only apply if the base-line enactment rate in the easy condition is low enough. Finally, a three-way interaction (i.e., formulating implementation intentions enhance enactment in the difficult goal-condition only) would support the previous implementation hypothesis. Method Participants and design. Fifteen participants (seven women and eight men) were asked to generate 10 intentions for the following week. Their ages ranged between 20


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and 28 years. ‘Focus’ was a between-subject variable and referred to the focus while generating intentions. Seven participants were asked to generate goals (goal-condition), and the other eight were asked to predict their actions (action-condition). Thus, in the goal-condition, the focus was on the goal or the outcome, and in the action-condition, the focus was on intended actions, rather than on their outcomes. Difficulty of the intentions (high vs. low) as well as implementation intentions (present or absent) were within-subject variables. The first one was based on subjective ratings, and the second one was experimentally controlled. The first session of the study took about 10 minutes to complete. The second session took place one week later and lasted about two minutes. For practical reasons, the second session was announced during the first session, but no information was given on the purpose of this second session. Procedure. The participants received three pages. On the first page, the purpose of the study was explained. They were informed that the study was about processes by which people come to goal realization (goal-condition) or that we studied how participants were able to predict their behavior (action-condition). They were told that the aim of the study was to find strategies for people who failed in executing their goals (goalcondition), or who failed to predict their own actions (action-condition). Then they were told that they would have to rate how certain they were that they would perform this action/reach the goal for every intention they would provide. This item served to differentiate between easy and difficult intentions. Manipulation of Focus. In the Goal condition, we asked the participants: “Give 10 goals you have for the following week.” In the Action condition, we asked the participants: “Predict your behavior for the coming week: List 10 predictions.” After generating an intention, the participants had to rate the Difficulty-item mentioned above on a seven-point scale (from “not at all” to “entirely sure”). Implementation intentions. After the generation phase, the participants were asked to specify a predetermined subset of their intentions. They had to do so by adding when exactly they would perform the action, under what condition they would do so (for instance, if a certain person is present), or in which circumstances they would do so (e.g., the weather condition). The subset of intentions that had to be specified was predetermined and systematically varied across participants. Measurement of enactment rate. After one week, the participants were contacted and invited to indicate whether or not they had performed the intentions that they had provided a week earlier. Results Construction of the variable Difficulty (difficult vs. easy intentions). We carried out a median split to construct two groups of intentions. When perceived certainty was higher than 4 (on a 7-point scale), the intention was considered easy (n = 80), and intentions with a score up to 4 were considered difficult (n = 70). Enactment rate as a function of Implementation intention, perceived Difficulty, and Focus. A split-plot ANOVA with enactment rate as dependent variable, Difficulty (high vs. low) and Implementation intention (yes vs. no) as within-subject variables, and

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Focus (goal vs. action) as between-subject variables was carried out. There was neither a main effect for Focus: F(1,13) < 1.0, nor for Implementation intention, (F(1,130) = 1.43, p > .20). There was a main effect, however, for Difficulty: F(1,130) = 23.28, p < .001. Easy intentions were enacted more often (M = 0.79) than difficult ones (M = 0.41). There were no reliable individual differences: F(13,130) < 1.0. The average enactment of the different participants ranged between 0.40 and 0.80. Neither the interaction between Focus and Difficulty (F(1,130) < 1.0) nor the interaction between Focus and Implementation intention (F(1,130) = 1.51, p > 0.20) was significant. However, contrary to expectations, the effect of Implementation intentions was larger in the action-condition (+21%) than in the goal-condition (+3%, see Table 1). The interaction between Difficulty and Implementation intention was significant: F(1,130) = 5.76, p < 0.02. Post-hoc analyses revealed that forming implementation intentions significantly enhanced the enactment of easy intentions (+23%), but not that of difficult intentions (-4%; see Table 2). The slight decrease is in the opposite direction of what was expected. The three-way interaction was not significant (F(1,130) < 1.0). Discussion The purpose of this study was to test three hypotheses as to why forming implementation intentions from easy intentions was not beneficial (Gollwitzer & Brandstätter, 1997). The first hypothesis referred to a ceiling effect, the second one attributed the failure to an effect of habit, and the third hypothesis attributed the failure to previous formulating of implementation intentions. TABLE 1 Enactment Rate as a Function of Focus and Implementation Intention Focus on the no implementation intention implementation intention

goal

action

0.60 (n=35) 0.63 (n=35)

0.51 (n=41) 0.72 (n=39)

Note: All SD’s between 0.46 and 0.51. TABLE 2 Enactment Rate as a Function of Difficulty of the Goal and Implementation Intention Difficulty of the Intention no implementation intention implementation intention

Easy

Difficult

0.67a (n=39) 0.90c (n=41)

0.43a,b (n=37) 0.39b (n=33)

Note: All SD’s between 0.30 and 0.50. Means with the same letter are not significantly different.


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First, by asking participants to provide several intentions, we succeeded in reducing the basement enactment rate. Gollwitzer and Brandstätter reported 78%, whereas we found 67%. Therefore, the analyses may throw light on the earlier failure to find an effect of implementation intentions. Table 2 shows that for easy goals, forming implementation intentions have a significant effect (from 67% to 90%). Thus, Gollwitzer and Brandstätter’s failure to find an implementation effect might indeed be due to a simple ceiling effect. Therefore, the other two possible explanations (one in terms of habit, and one in terms of previous implementation intentions) are no longer necessary because we found that easy intentions do benefit from forming implementation intentions. However, we failed to replicate the well-documented implementation effect for difficult intentions. We found that formulating implementation intentions seems to enhance easy intentions, but not difficult ones. To find out why this might be the case, we now focus on two differences between Gollwitzer and Brandstätter’s method and ours that might explain the divergent pattern of results. First, in Gollwitzer and Brandstätter (1997), perceived difficulty served to generate goals. In our experiment, participants had to evaluate the perceived certainty that they would enact the actions. Possibly, perceived difficulty and perceived certainty diverge more than we had anticipated. It might be the case that low certainty not only reflects high perceived difficulty, but also low commitment. That is, a person might be uncertain about an intention because it is not of high value to her. In Study 2, we will measure both variables and compare analyses with perceived certainty and perceived difficulty. Another major difference between Gollwitzer and Brandstätter’s method and ours is the measurement of implementation intentions. They measured whether or not the participants had formed implementation intentions, whereas we experimentally induced them. Possibly, formulating implementation intentions spontaneously might differ from being asked to do so, although literature (see Gollwitzer, 1999) suggests that the implementation effect is independent of its origin. At this point, we are not interested in the similarity of both methods. Our purpose is to evaluate the reliability of our failure to enhance enactment of difficult intentions. To increase comparibility with other studies, we no longer experimentally controlled the formulation of implementation intentions, but rather observed its spontaneous occurence. Further, the finding that predicted intentions seem to benefit more (+19%) from forming implementation intentions than goals (+3%), although not significant, is opposite to our expectations. We assumed that a focus on the action rather than on the outcome would facilitate the generation of previously formulated implementation intentions. If this holds, then forming implementation intentions could not have additional effects in the Action condition. However, it is possible that our manipulation of Focus did not have the effect we intended it to have. Therefore, in the second study, some additional variables were included to evaluate this manipulation. STUDY 2 Study 2 is a replication of Study 1 with two major changes. First, we did not ask the persons to form implementation intentions, but evaluated whether they were spontane-

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ously formulated or not. Second, in addition to perceived certainty, we included items measuring difficulty, importance, required effort, novelty of the action, the need to exert willpower to reach the goal, and perceived control. The first purpose of this experiment was to evaluate whether Gollwitzer and Brandstätter’s (1997) failure to find implementation effects for easy goals was indeed due to a ceiling effect, as the results of our first study suggest. Second, we wanted to evaluate the reliability of our failure to enhance the enactment rate of difficult intentions, and whether this might be due to the difference between certainty and difficulty. Finally, we wanted to evaluate the nature of the Focus manipulation. Method Participants and design. Fourteen sophomores (eleven women and three men) participated in exchange for course credit. Thirteen of them provided the requested number of 10 intentions and one participant in the Goal condition provided only eight, yielding a total of 138 intentions. Focus was a between-subject manipulation (action vs. goal) and Implementation intentions (present vs. absent), perceived certainty, and perceived difficulty (both high vs. low) were within-subject variables. In contrast to the first study, Implementation intention was not controlled experimentally, but measured based on the intentions the participants provided. The first session of the experiment took about 20 minutes to complete. After one week, the participants returned to indicate enactment rates. Again, an appointment was made for the second session, but its purpose was not mentioned. The second session took about two minutes. Procedure. The introduction and the manipulation of Type of Goal were similar to the ones used in Study 1. However, to increase the likelihood that participants would spontaneously provide their implementation intentions, they were given more space to write down their intentions. Afterwards, a rater judged whether or not the intention was furnished with a temporal or situational specification (that is, whether or not it was an implementation intention). After the generation of the intentions, participants received seven items and had to rate their intentions on a seven-point scale from “not at all” to “very much so.” The exact formulation of the items varied with the Focus manipulation. The alternative versions are represented with a slash. The items were “How certain are you that you will achieve this goal/perform this action?,” “How much control do you have over this goal/ action?,” “How difficult is it to reach this goal/perform this action?,” “How important is this goal/this action to you?,” “Are you willing to expend effort to reach this goal/to perform this action?.” “Will you need to use your willpower to reach this goal/perform this action?” and “Check by Y or N whether or not you thought of this goal/action for the first time during this experiment.” The questions about perceived control, importance, effort, willpower, and novelty were used to evaluate the Focus manipulation. The questions tapping into difficulty, required willpower, importance, and willingness to exert effort were used to investigate the nature of the certainty item that we used in the first study. Specifically, importance and the willingness to exert effort refer to commitment to the goal/ action. Finally, the scores on the certainty and difficulty items were dichotomized.


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After one week, the participants were returned their ten intentions and had to check whether or not they had performed them. Results Manipulation checks. We conducted several ANOVAs with the relevant items as dependent variables, and Focus and the person as independent variables. First, as expected, in the Action condition, the intentions were more often implementation intentions (66%) than the intentions in the Goal condition (40%), F(1,124) = 16.11, p .20). High perceived certainty was related to a higher enactment rate (78%) than low perceived certainty (36%: F(1,134) = 33.17, p < .001). The interaction between perceived certainty and implementation intentions we found in the first study was replicated: F(1,134) = 5.44, p < .03. Formulating implementation intentions significantly increased the enactment rate of intentions that were quite certain, but not that of intentions that were uncertain (see Table 3). This indicates that the unexpected finding of the first study is reliable. Enactment rate as a function of Difficulty, Implementation intentions, and Focus. We carried out a split-plot ANOVA with enactment rate as a dependent variable, Focus (goal vs. action) as a between-subject variable, and Difficulty (high vs. low) and Implemen-

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TABLE 3 Replication of Study 1: Enactment Rate as a Function of Certainty of the Intention and Implementation Intention Certainty of the Intention High

Low

b

no implementation intention

0.39b,c (n=33) 0.31c (n=18)

0.63 (n=32) 0.86a (n=55)

implementation intention

Note: All SD’s between 0.30 and 0.43. Means with the same letter are not significantly different.

tation intentions (present or absent) as within-subject variables. The main effect for Difficulty was significant: F(1,118) = 7.95, p < .01. Easy intentions were performed in 72% of the cases and difficult ones in 46% of the cases. Unlike in Study 1, the main effect for Focus was also significant: F(1,12) = 4.86, p < .05. Intentions of the Action condition were more often enacted (70%) than were intentions in the Goal condition (54%). The main effect for Implementation intentions went in the expected direction, but was not significant (F(1,118) = 2.28, p < .14). Intentions that were furnished with an implementation intention were slightly more likely to be performed (73%) than those without such an intention (51%). None of the three two-way interactions approached significance (all Fs(1,118) < 1.0). There were no reliable individual differences (F(12,118) < 1.0). However, the three-way interaction was substantial and significant (F(1,118) = 8.56, p < .005). Table 4 shows the enactment rates for the eight conditions. In the easy conditions, formulating implementation intentions increased the enactment rate from 60% (n = 40) to 81% (n = 48). This difference approached statistical significance: F(1,84) = 3.56, p < .06. In the difficult conditions, the enactment increased from 36% (n = 25) to 56% (n = 25). This difference was not significant (F < TABLE 4 Enactment Rate as a Function of Focus, Implementation Intention, and Difficulty of the Intention Difficulty of the intention EASY

DIFFICULT

Focus on the:

goal*

action

goal*

action°


0.55 (n=29) 0.77 (n=17)

0.73 (n=11) 0.83 (n=31)

0.50 (n=12) 0.20 (n=10)

0.24 (n=13) 0.81 (n=15)


Note: All SD’s between 0.30 and 0.46. * Implementation effect is marginally significant (< .07). ° Implementation effect is significant at the .001 level.


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1.0). However, in the difficult conditions, the interaction between Focus and Implementation intention was significant: F(1,46) = 16.11, p < .001. Specifically, in the Goal condition, there was an almost significant negative effect of implementation intentions: F(1,46) = 3.44, p = .07. In the Action condition, the positive effect was significant beyond the .001 level (F(1,46) = 15.68). DISCUSSION The first purpose of this study was to evaluate whether the ceiling hypothesis could explain Gollwitzer and Brandstätter’s (1997) failure to find an implementation effect for easy goals. Like the results of the first study, the present results support the ceilingeffect hypothesis. The base-line enactment rate was low enough (60%) to allow an additional implementation effect in the easy condition. It does not significantly so in the (easy) action-condition, but this might be due to a ceiling effect. This finding neither supports Gollwitzer and Brandstätter’s interpretation that easy goals did not benefit from formulating implementation intentions because they represented habits, nor does it support ours that easy goals might have been turned into implementation intentions prior to the experiment. Our data show that formulating implementation intention enhance the enactment rate of easy goals. The second purpose of this study was to evaluate the reliability of our failure to enhance the enactment rate of difficult goals, and whether the way we measured difficulty in the first study (i.e., by means of the certainty item) might explain this divergence from earlier reported findings (Gollwitzer, 1999). First, the data of the present study indicate that the unexpected finding that uncertain intentions do not benefit from forming implementation intentions is reliable. Further analyses with Difficulty as the independent variable, substituting for Certainty, showed that the non-effect of forming implementation intentions is due to one particular condition. Difficult intentions that were generated in the Action condition dramatically benefited from forming implementation intentions (from 24% to 81%), whereas those in the Goal condition did not, at the contrary (from 50% to 20%). Given the relation between certainty and difficulty, the non-effect for the uncertain intentions in study 1 might reflect the same phenomenon (see also the analyses of the present data with certainty instead of difficulty as an independent variable, Table 3). The third purpose was to explore the exact nature of our Focus manipulation. The manipulation checks reveal that actors are more committed to intentions that are generated in the Goal condition than to intentions that are generated in the Action condition. Specifically, the importance of the intentions and willingness to expend effort were higher in the Goal condition than in the Action condition. The nature of the Focus manipulation becomes more relevant because the manipulation strongly interacted with the formulation of implementation intentions for difficult intentions. Nevertheless, differences in commitment cannot explain our finding that implementation intentions did not enhance enactment in the difficult goal condition, because the literature (Gollwitzer, 1999; Orbell, Hodgkins, & Sheeran, 1997) suggests

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that a lack of commitment might preclude an effect of implementation intentions, and not vice versa. Two alternative explanations for the divergent pattern of results deserve discussion. First, in contrast with Gollwitzer and Brandstätter (1997, p. 188), we allowed participants to generate intentions they already had prior to coming to the lab. Therefore, our failure to find an effect in the difficult goal condition might be due to the fact that there were more novel goals in this condition than in the other conditions. However, an analysis with the novel intentions omitted did not substantially affect the three-way interaction (F(1,80) = 3.99, p < .05). The pattern remained unchanged. Further, in Gollwitzer and Brandstätter’s study, all participants were women. Ours included men. However, Focus-condition was not related with gender. Moreover, new analyses with women only (n = 11) did not affect the three-way interaction either (F(1,93) = 8.05, p < .01). Again, the pattern of the results remained similar. In sum, we conclude that not all types of difficult intentions benefit from turning them into implementation intentions. Nevertheless, one might argue that the negative effect of implementation intentions in the Difficult Goal condition is unreliable due to low cell sizes (n = 22). Moreover, the Focus manipulation might be questionable because we did not directly check the participants’ focus during the generation of intentions. Therefore, we decided to replicate the experiment by means of a different methodology. STUDY 3 Study 3 is a replication of Study 2 with three changes. First, to further increase the comparability with the literature, we instructed the participants to carry out some actions in the future, rather than asking them to predict their own actions. Concerning the focus on either the action or the outcome, receiving the instruction to perform an action and predicting one’s action are very similar. However, the advantage of receiving an instruction to predicting an action is that the former has been used in previous studies (e.g., Gollwitzer, 1993). For sake of clarity, we call this manipulation Type of goal (i.e., self-set vs. imposed). Second, to prevent a confound with individual differences in the generation of intentions, we manipulated the Type of goal variable within-subjects. Third, the implementation intentions were experimentally induced to prevent self-selecting biases. We expected that forming implementation intentions would enhance the enactment rate of all types of intentions, except difficult self-set goals (i.e., intentions with the focus on the outcome). Method Participants and design. Sixteen sophomores (five men and 11 women) participated in return for course credit. Three independent variables were manipulated: Difficulty (high vs. low), experimentally induced Implementation intentions (present or absent), and Type of goal (imposed vs. self-set goals). These were all within-subject variables. Further, participants had to rate several items for each intention. In a second session after two weeks (which was again announced during the first session), they had to


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indicate whether or not they had performed the intention. A two-week window was preferred to increase ecological validity. Three participants failed to complete the items concerning the instructions we gave them, and their data were discarded from all analyses. The first session took about 30 minutes to complete. The second one took about three minutes. Procedure. The introduction to the study was changed to incorporate more examples and references to differences in goals. Thereby, the similarity with Gollwitzer and Brandstätter’s introduction (1997, p. 188) was increased. The participants then had to generate ten goals for the coming two weeks. Having generated their goals, they had to rate seven questions concerning the intentions. These were the same as used in the second study. Then they received the following four instructions. 1.

2. 3. 4.

You will receive a stamped envelope with my address on it. Please return this envelope to me. Please send it not today but tomorrow or later. Please also put a note in the envelope with your name on it. In the envelope you find 10 franks 1 to call me. Please call on Monday or Thursday between 8.45 and 18.00 (phone number) and tell me your name. Write four lines of text about your hobbies and bring it to the second session within two weeks. Ask your best friend on which day of the week she or he was born. (If he or she does not know, tell us you asked it but that he or she did not know).

Then, they had to complete the same seven items concerning these instructions. On the next page, they had to formulate implementation intentions on a subset of goals and instructions (five out of 10 goals and two out of four instructions). To that purpose, they first had to write down the most relevant word of a predetermined subset of their goals. This word served as a mnemonic aid. The two selected instructions were repeated on this page. Then they were told to form implementation intentions. They were asked to specify the moment at which they would enact the intention, and the situation in which they intended to do so. The subset of goals and instructions that had to be specified varied across participants. During the two following weeks, the phone calls and the incoming envelopes were registered. After two weeks, the participants returned and they received a sheet with their 10 goals and the two instructions that did not involve previous contacts with us typed on it (i.e., the text on their hobbies and their friend’s birthday). They had to check whether or not they had enacted them. Results An ANOVA with enactment rate as the dependent variable and Difficulty (high vs. low), Implementation intention (present or absent), and Type of goal (self-set vs. imposed goal) as independent within-subject variables was carried out. Difficult intentions were less often performed (63%) than easy ones (78%), but this difference was not significant (F(1,145) = 2.48, p = .12). Further, imposed intentions were performed in 73% of the cases and self-set intentions in 70% of the cases: (F(1,145) < 1.0). Third,

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intentions that were furnished with an implementation intention were performed significantly more often (73%) than intentions without it (68%): F(1,145) = 4.66, p < .05.2 However, the interaction between Implementation intentions and Type of goal affected this main effect: F(1,145) = 7.76, p < .01. Specifically, there was no implementation effect in the goal-condition (from 72% to 68%) but for instructions, there was a substantial increase (from 57% to 89%). The other two-way interactions were not significant (both Fs < 1.0). However, the three-way interaction approached significance: F(1,145) = 3.18, p < .08. Table 5 shows that the pattern of the findings was very similar to the one found in the second study. Again, difficult self-set goals did not benefit from implementation intentions, whereas easy self-set goals as well as difficult and easy instructions did. Discussion The purpose of this study was to evaluate the reliability of the surprising finding that implementation intentions did not enhance enactment rate of difficult self-set goals. We expected that forming implementation intentions would enhance the enactment rate of all types of intentions, except difficult intentions with a focus on the outcome. The data show that even when Type of goal is manipulated within-subjects, and when instructions are used instead of action predictions, the failure to find an implementation effect in the difficult goal-condition is maintained. Again, easy goals and instructions, as well as difficult instructions benefit from implementation intentions (provided that the base-line is not too high). In contrast, difficult goals do not benefit from implementation intentions. Therefore, we can conclude that the finding is robust. In contrast to other types of intentions, difficult self-set goals do not benefit from formulating implementation intentions. GENERAL DISCUSSION The original purpose of this study was to evaluate whether goal difficulty moderated the effect of implementation intentions. The three studies strongly suggest that Gollwitzer TABLE 5 Enactment Rate as a Function of Type of Goal, Implementation Intention, and Difficulty of the Intention Difficulty of the Intention EASY

DIFFICULT

Type of Goal

self-set

instruction

self-set

instruction


0.74 (n=30) 0.81 (n=34)

0.65 (n=13) 0.89 (n=16)

0.71 (n=35) 0.53 (n=31)

0.47 (n=11) 0.89 (n=7)


Note: All SD’s between 0.29 and 0.51.


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and Brandstätter’s failure to find a significant effect of forming implementation intention from easy goals should be attributed to a ceiling effect and not to a difference in habits or previous formation of implementation intentions. That is, throughout the three studies reflecting five conditions of easy goals, we found that implementation intentions increased the enactment rate of easy goals to almost perfect (with enactments rates ranging from 77% to 90%). This is in line with the 84% Gollwitzer and Brandstätter (1997) reported. For each of these five conditions, implementation intentions increased the enactment rate. Such a finding happens only once every 32 times (i.e., 2 to the 5th power, p = .03) under the null-hypothesis that there is no effect. Therefore, we conclude that forming implementation intentions do have an effect on easy intentions. The major factor affecting whether or not the effect in one individual condition was significant seems to be the base-line enactment rate. In sum, a ceiling effect interpretation appears to be the best one available. This also implies that the failure to find an implementation effect does not require a more sophisticated explanation in terms of habit or earlier implementation intentions, because it is not really a failure. Difficulty does not moderate the effect of formulating implementation intentions. A second interesting finding in this series of experiments is that there might be an additional moderating variable for the relation between forming implementation intentions and enacting them. That is, three times we found that difficult goals did not benefit from forming implementation intentions. In fact, their enactment might even be hindered by it. How can this be explained? This question comes down to the question in what respect our goal-conditions (three replications) differed from our action-condition, our instruction-condition, and Gollwitzer and Brandstätter’s goal-condition. Possibly, our goal-condition highlighted the outcomes, whereas the other ones highlighted the process or the required actions. For instance, in reporting how they introduced their participants, Gollwitzer and Brandstätter wrote: “It was explained that personal goals can differ in many ways. They may be more or less difficult to implement, require only a few or a complex sequence of action steps, ...” (1997, p. 188, italics added). Likewise, in our action condition, the term “action” prevailed in the introduction. Further, the instructions referred to actions rather than outcomes. In contrast, in our goal condition, the stress was on the word “goal.” The word “action” or similar terms were not included. We did so to differentiate the Focus conditions. Therefore, the instructions in our goal condition might have led the participants to generate from a subset of desired outcomes for which the corresponding actions had not necessarily been selected yet. In sum, we propose that difficult goals for which the actions that are required to reach them have not been imagined yet do not benefit from implementation intentions. This distinction suggests a possible explanation for the finding that this type of goal does not benefit from forming implementation intentions. Specifically, implementing a goal (i.e., specifying when and where it should be implemented) might be useless unless some preparatory actions have been performed. For instance, when one has the goal to read a particular book, but one does not yet possess it, an implementation intention specifying when one will read the book is useless. Rather, one should first specify that one wants to buy or borrow the book. Therefore, specifying when and where might be

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different from specifying what (see Sheeran & Orbell, 1999, note 1, p. 351). Actually, this interpretation of our data suggests that when one faces a difficult project, one should first try to specify what exactly needs to be done, rather than when or where. Therefore, we agree with Gollwitzer and Brandstätter that forming implementation intentions specifying what one should do might also enhance goal enactment. However, it might be the case that different types of implementation intentions are required to cope with different types of goals. Verplanken and Faes (1999) were the first to induce the “what”-aspect of implementation intentions. They found a positive effect of formulating this type of implementation intentions. However, they did not differentiate between the “what”- and the “when”- or “where”-aspect, and did not differentiate between difficult and easy goals. Therefore, further research is required that differentiates both types of implementation intentions. We predict that specifying what one should do will enhance the enactment of difficult intentions, but not that of easy ones. For easy goals, it is already known what is to be done. In contrast, specifying where or when one should act will enhance the enactment of easy intentions, but not that of difficult ones because in this case the person does not yet know what to do. We need to address a limitation of the research design. The design was not free of demand characteristics. To avoid high drop out rates, we decided to tell participants that a follow-up session was coming up. Although they were not informed on the purpose of the second session, it is likely that participants expected that we were after their goal completion rate. As a result, participants may have completed their goals partly to comply with the experimental demand. If this distortion were systematic, this would not be a problem because we were not gauging the average goal completion rate in the population. A problem could emerge, however, when demand interacted with the manipulations. First, it is obvious that we want participants to carry out our instructions (Study 3). Giving instructions is demand. This may be less the case for goals. Therefore, this difference may explain the results of Study 3 (especially the non-effect in the goal condition and the strong effect in the instruction condition). However, we find this explanation not very plausible because the results in Study 3 were strikingly similar to those in the second study, where we did not use instructions but future actions. Second, demand could be bound by a ceiling effect in the easy conditions in comparison with the difficult condition. However, the most striking finding in the present series of studies was a lack of effect in one particular difficult condition, where base-line goal completion was fairly low. Finally, demand might have been stronger when implementation intentions had to be formed, because these intentions were repeated during the process. However, in Study 2, implementation intentions were not manipulated but measured, and the data pattern was very similar to that in the other studies. Moreover, we did not find an implementation effect in one condition, and, therefore, demand cannot be invoked to explain this particular finding. In sum, we acknowledge that there could have been a general positive effect of demand but this could not parsimoneously explain our findings. Further, demand may have interacted with difficulty, but such an interaction would yield the opposite pattern. Finally, demand may have interacted with the other variables, but these potential interactions cannot consistently be used as an explanation for the findings across the three studies. Therefore, we are confident that the finding


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that forming implementation did not enhance enactment in the difficult goal condition is reliable and that the interpretation we offer is more parsimonious than the one in terms of demand. To summarize, our data indicate that difficulty does not moderate the relation between implementation intentions and their enactment. Rather, easy goals might sometimes fail to benefit significantly from implementation intentions because of a ceiling effect. Furthermore, our data suggest that knowledge of the steps that are required to reach a goal might moderate the relation between implementation intentions and their enactment. In addition, we suggest that difficult and easy goals might benefit from different types of implementation intentions. That is, when the person does not know how to reach a goal, specifying what one will do might be superior to specifying when or where one wants to reach the goal. In contrast, when the goal is easy (for instance, because the actions leading to it are well known or have been performed before), specifying when or where will enhance the enactment, whereas specifying what will be superfluous. Therefore, we conclude that difficulty is, after all, a moderating variable in the relation between implementation intentions and their enactment. NOTES Accepted for publication: April 1, 2001 This research was supported in part by a grant from the Fund for Scientific Research, Flanders, Belgium. The authors thank Guido Peeters for comments on an earlier draft. Address correspondence to: Siegfried Dewitte, Department of Applied Economics, Catholic University of Leuven, Naamsestraat 6g, B-3000 Leuven, Belgium. E-mail: [email protected] 1. 2.

Ten franks is the price of a phone call from a public phone cell. Its value is about $.25 or 25 Eurocent. The strong implementation effect in the instruction condition is responsible for the overall main effect. However, because the cell sizes in the instruction condition are considerably smaller than those in the goal condition, this difference is largely erased in the raw means. An ANOVA corrects for different cell sizes, which explains why the small difference in raw means is significant.

REFERENCES Gollwitzer, P. M. (1993). Goal Achievement: The role of intentions. In W. Stroebe & M. Hewstone (Eds.), European review of social psychology, Volume 4 (pp. 141-185). Munich, Germany: Wiley & Sons. Gollwitzer, P. M. (1996). The volitional benefits of planning. In P. M. Gollwitzer & J. A. Bargh, The psychology of action. Linking cognition and motivation. New York: Guilford Press. Gollwitzer, P. M. (1999). Implementation intentions: Strong effects of simple plans. American Psychologist, 54, 493-503. Gollwitzer, P. M., & Brandstätter, V. (1997). Intentions and effective goal pursuit. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 73, 186-199. Orbell, S., Hodgkins, S., & Sheeran, P. (1997). Implementation intentions and the theory of planned behaviour. Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin, 23, 945-954. Sheeran, P., & Orbell, S. (1999). Implementation intentions and repeated behavior:Augmenting the predictive validity of the theory of planned behavior. European Journal of Social Psychology, 29, 349360. Verplanken, B., Aarts, H., van Knippenberg, A., & Moonen, A. (1998). Habit versus planned behaviour: A field experiment. British Journal of Social Psychology, 37, 111-128. Verplanken, B., & Faes, S. (1999). Good intentions, bad habits, and effects of forming implementation intentions on healthy dieting. European Journal of Social Psychology, 29, 591-604.

Implementation Intentions Do Not Enhance All Types of ... - CiteSeerX

Implementation Intentions Do Not Enhance All Types of ... - CiteSeerX

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