Premium
To plan or not to plan? Goal achievement or interrupting the performance of mundane behaviors
Author(s) -
Aarts Henk,
Dijksterhuis Ap,
Midden Cees
Publication year - 1999
Publication title -
european journal of social psychology
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 1.609
H-Index - 111
eISSN - 1099-0992
pISSN - 0046-2772
DOI - 10.1002/(sici)1099-0992(199912)29:8<971::aid-ejsp963>3.0.co;2-a
Subject(s) - psychology , cafeteria , goal pursuit , task (project management) , plan (archaeology) , control (management) , social psychology , goal setting , cognition , applied psychology , cognitive psychology , medicine , management , archaeology , pathology , neuroscience , economics , history
The present experiment investigated cognitive and behavioral effects of planning (i.e. forming implementation intentions) on goal pursuit during the performance of mundane behaviors. Participants received the goal to collect a coupon halfway the hall from the lab to the cafeteria. Later, they were also given the task to go from the lab to the cafeteria. Thus participants had to attain a new goal by interrupting a mundane behavior. Some participants enriched their goal with implementation intentions, others did not. Results showed that participants who formed implementation intentions were more effective in goal pursuit than the control group. Importantly, the data suggest that the effects of planning on goal completion are mediated by a heightened mental accessibility of environmental cues related to the goal completion task. Copyright © 1999 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.