To plan or not to plan? Goal achievement or interrupting the performance of mundane behaviors

The present experiment investigated cognitive and behavioral e€ects 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 e€ective in goal pursuit than the control group. Importantly, the data suggest that the e€ects 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. The achievement of goalsÐthe wish or desire to perform an action associated with the anticipation of some kind of outcomeÐis fundamental to human functioning. Striving for goals provide structure to our lives (e.g. Carver, 1996; Locke & Latham, 1990). However, striving for goals and goal completion are two di€erent things. Sometimes the completion of goals is postponed for minutes, hours, days or even weeks, simply because goal attainment often requires the interruption of everyday habitual behavior, something that is easier said than done. A few weeks ago, on a Monday morning, one of the authors decided to mail a letter on his way to work. On Tuesday evening, upon discovering that the letter was still in the pocket of his jacket, he wrote `letter!' on his hand, hoping to be able to remind himself to mail the letter the next morning. An act to restore personal hygiene wiped out this reminder though and CCC 0046±2772/99/080971±09$17.50 Received 29 April 1998 Copyright # 1999 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd. Accepted 22 September 1998 European Journal of Social Psychology Eur. J. Soc. Psychol. 29, 971±979 (1999) *Correspondence to: Dr Henk Aarts, Department of Psychology and Language, Building DG 0.23, Eindhoven University of Technology, PO Box 513, 5600 MB Eindhoven, The Netherlands. e-mail: [email protected] goal attainment ®nally took place on Thursday night. In the pouring rain, he walked to the nearest box and managed to just make the deadline. In other words, many goals have to be enacted upon while being engaged in behaviors that take on a habitual character and are under control of the physical and social environment (e.g. James, 1890; Ouellette & Wood, 1998). As our example suggests, the chances to materialize relatively simple and straightforward goals can be surprisingly low. To interrupt habits, conscious attention on the pending goal is required and experience shows that this is often hard. Research on e€ective goal pursuit suggests that the mere act of planningÐthe ability to anticipate a course of action intended to culminate in the achievement of a goalÐmay help to interrupt the proceeding of habitual, mundane behaviors. Speci®cally, forming implementation intentions as to when, where and how one will enact the intended behavior enhances the probability of successful goal pursuit in everyday life (Gollwitzer, 1993). These intentions connect a goal-directed behavior to an anticipated situational context. Such intentions take the format of `I will do y when situation z is encountered' and can be strategically formed by the individual in the implemental phase to promote the initiation and successful execution of goal-directed actions. For instance, someone intending to mail a letter on his way to work (a goaldirected action that is often insuciently implemented) increases the probability of goal attainment by actively planning this intended action. Planning is the volitional act of connecting the achievement of a goal (e.g. `I intend to mail a letter on my way to work') to the anticipated environmental context in which that goal should be enacted (e.g. as soon as I reach the corner with the co€ee shop, I turn left). This way, action ignition is facilitated as the formation of implementation intentions leads to strong mental associations between situations and behavior. In addition, increased accessibility of the environmental context in long-term memory enhances the probability of goal completion, because the mere perception of speci®ed environmental features is capable of bringing the previously formulated goal into mind (and hence the activation of the resulting action itself; see Gollwitzer, 1993). A few studies have demonstrated that goals are indeed more likely to be achieved when they are furnished with implementation intentions (e.g. Gollwitzer & BrandstaÈ tter, 1997; Orbell, Hodgkins & Sheeran, 1997; Verplanken & Faes, in press). For instance, in a study on breast self-examination (BSE), Orbell et al. (1997) found that among 33 women who had formulated the goal to perform BSE 100 per cent actually said they did so when they made implementation intentions in advance compared with 53 per cent of the control group. However, although these ®ndings point at the powerful e€ects of planning on goal achievement in everyday life, there is no direct evidence available that shows that these e€ects are indeed caused by the enhanced accessibility of the situational features (such as the corner with the co€ee shop). Therefore, the present experiment examined the underlying cognitive changes that result from implementation intentions and the relation between these changes and goal completion. It is anticipated that planning (1) heightens the accessibility of mental representations of situational features associated with the intended action, (2) increases the completion rate of the intended action, and that (3) the e€ects of planning on goal completion are caused by the heightened cognitive accessibility of the speci®ed situations related to the intended behavior. To test these ideas, we provided all participants with the same goal (collecting a coupon at a speci®ed location). Later, they were instructed to perform a mundane 972 H. Aarts et al. Copyright # 1999 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd. Eur. J. Soc. Psychol. 29, 971±979 (1999) behavior (walking from the lab to the department cafeteria). Two di€erent planning procedures were designed. Participants in the experimental condition were instructed to plan the collection of the coupon, while participants in the control condition were required to plan a di€erent act, namely to spend the coupon. This procedure ensured us that we did not make the term coupon more accessible for one group than for the other. Next, we assessed the accessibility of speci®ed situations related to the intended action by measuring the speed of responding to these situational cues in a lexical decision task (see, Neely, 1991). Later, we observed whether participants collected the coupon or not.