Anja Achtziger

Implementation Intentions and Shielding Goal Striving From Unwanted Thoughts and Feelings

Forming an implementation intention or “if-then plan” promotes the attainment of different types of goals (Gollwitzer, 1999; Gollwitzer & Sheeran, 2006). So far, research on implementation intentions has focused on the initiation of goal striving, whereas the issue of shielding of ongoing goal striving has been largely neglected. In two field experiments concerned with dieting (Study 1) and athletic goals (Study 2), goal shielding was supported by implementation intentions geared at controlling potentially interfering inner states (i.e., cravings for junk food in Study 1, and disruptive thoughts, feelings, and physiological states in Study 2). In both experiments, forming if-then plans enhanced the rate of goal attainment. Thus, implementation intention formation can be used to promote the realization of desired outcomes not only by facilitating getting started with goal striving but also by preventing goal striving from straying off course.

Motivation und Volition im Handlungsverlauf

Fur Kurt Lewin (vgl. Lewin, Dembo, Festinger & Sears, 1944) bestand nie ein Zweifel daran, dass Phanomene des Motiviertseins nur aus einer Handlungsperspektive heraus adaquat verstanden und analysiert werden konnen. Dies sei deshalb so, weil Prozesse des Zielsetzens (»goal setting«) und der Zielrealisierung (»goal striving«) jeweils anderen psychologischen Prinzipien unterliegen. Diese Einsicht blieb lange Zeit unberucksichtigt, wahrscheinlich aus dem einfachen Grund, weil die Analyse des Zielsetzens anhand von Erwartungs-Wert-Modellen sehr erfolgreich war (Festinger, 1942; Atkinson, 1957) und so die ganze Aufmerksamkeit der Motivationspsychologie band. Erst mit dem Erwachen der Zielpsychologie (beginnend mit Klingers »current concerns«, 1977, und Wicklund und Gollwitzers »self-definitional goals«, 1982) und der Psychologie der Handlungskontrolle basierend auf Kuhls Analyse der Lage- vs. Handlungsorientierung, 1983; ▸ detaillierte Ausfuhrungen in Kap. 13) wurde den Prozessen und den mehr oder weniger erfolgreichen Strategien der Zielrealisierung die Aufmerksamkeit zu teil, die ihnen Kurt Lewin bereits in den 40er-Jahren zugedacht hatte (Oettingen & Gollwitzer, 2001). Menschliches Verhalten aus einer Handlungsperspektive zu betrachten, bedeutet im Gegensatz zu einer behavioristischen Betrachtungsweise auch, die Analyse des Verhaltens nicht nur auf das Reagieren und das Ausfuhren gelernter Gewohnheiten zu begrenzen.

Staying on track: Planned goal striving is protected from disruptive internal states

Past implementation intention research focused on shielding goal striving from disruptive internal states (e.g., being anxious) by forming if–then plans that link these very states to instrumental coping responses. In the present line of research, we investigated whether planning out goal striving by means of if–then plans specifying opportunities to initiate goal-directed responses also protects goal striving from the negative impact of disruptive internal states. Indeed, in the face of disruptive internal states, participants who had been asked to form implementation intentions that targeted opportunities for initiating goal-directed responses outperformed participants with a mere goal intention to do well on a focal task goal. Actually, implementation intention participants performed as well as control participants who were not burdened by disruptive internal states such as being in a certain mood (Study 1), ego-depleted (Study 2), or self-definitionally incomplete (Study 3). Results are discussed by pointing to the importance of hypo-egoic self-regulation.

Motivation and volition in the course of action

For Kurt Lewin (cf. Lewin, Dembo, Festinger, & Sears 1944), there was never any doubt that motivational phenomena can only be properly understood and analyzed from an action perspective. Indeed, as he pointed out in support of this claim, processes of goal setting and goal striving are governed by distinct psychological principles. These insights went unheeded for several decades, however, probably for the simple reason that goal-setting research based on the expectancyvalue paradigm proved so successful (Atkinson, 1957; Festinger, 1942) and captured the full attention of motivation psychologists. It was not until the emergence of the psychology of goals (starting with Klinger, 1977; Wicklund & Gollwitzer, 1982) and the psychology of action control (based on Kuhl, 1983; see Chap. 12) that the processes and potential strategies of goal striving began to receive the attention that Kurt Lewin had already felt they deserved back in the 1940s (Oettingen & Gollwitzer 2001). In contrast to the behaviorist approach, an action perspective on human behavior means extending the scope of analysis beyond simple stimulus-response bonds and the execution of learned habits. The concept of action is seen in opposition to such learned habits and automatic responses; it is restricted to those human behaviors that have what Max Weber (1921) termed “Sinn” (“meaning” or “sense”). In Weber’s conceptualization, “action” is all human behavior that the actor deems to have “meaning.” Likewise, external observers apply the criterion of “meaning” to determine whether or not another person’s behavior constitutes “action”: are there discernible “reasons” for that behavior?

Fast or Rational? A Response-Times Study of Bayesian Updating

We present a simple model for decision making under uncertainty building on dual-process theories from psychology, and use it to illustrate a possible component of intuitive decision making of particular relevance for managerial settings. Decisions are the result of the interaction between two decision processes. The first one captures optimization based on Bayesian updating of beliefs. The second corresponds to a form of reinforcement learning capturing the tendency to rely on past performance. The model predicts that (i) in the case of conflict between the two processes, correct responses are associated with longer response times, but (ii) if both processes are aligned, errors are slower. Furthermore, (iii) response times in the case of conflict are longer than in the case of alignment. We confirm the predictions of the model in an experiment using a paradigm where an associative win-stay, lose-shift process conflicted with rational belief updating.Data, as supplemental material, are available at http://dx.doi.org/10.1287/mnsc.2013.1793 This paper was accepted by Yuval Rottenstreich, judgment and decision making.

Strategies of intention formation are reflected in continuous MEG activity

Abstract Self-regulation of intention formation is pivotal for achieving behavior change. Fantasy realization theory (Oettingen, 2000) assumes that mentally contrasting a desired positive future with present negative reality turns high expectations of success into strong intentions to realize the desired future, while indulging in the positive future fails to do so. The present study tests the theorys process assumption that mental contrasting is a cognitively demanding, purposeful problem-solving strategy involving working and episodic memory, whereas indulging is a mindless daydreaming strategy involving the free flow of thought, by investigating the neural correlates of the two strategies via continuous magnetoencephalographic (MEG) activity. We observed greater activity during mental contrasting (but not indulging) compared to resting in prefrontal, frontal, parietal, and temporal areas, indicating that mental contrasting involves strong intention formation, working memory, and episodic memory. In addition, heightened activity of occipital areas was observed during mental contrasting compared to resting and indulging, suggesting that mental contrasting, more than indulging and resting, entails purposefully creating mental images. Taken together, these findings indicate that mental contrasting is indeed a purposeful problem-solving strategy based on past performance history, whereas indulging is a purposeless daydreaming strategy that is oblivious to past experiences.

N400 and LPP in spontaneous trait inferences.

Past research on spontaneous trait inferences using event related potentials (ERPs) has consistently reported increased late positive potential (LPP) amplitudes following social expectancy violations, but no N400 modulation. In the present study, participants read scenarios describing behaviors of unknown actors. They entailed descriptions of several positive trait implying behaviors, followed by a single final sentence describing behavior that was either consistent or inconsistent with the previously implied trait. As in previous studies, we found significantly increased LPP amplitudes following inconsistent behaviors at multiple frontal sites. Unlike in previous research, we also found increased N400 amplitudes at several centro-parietal sites. The divergence of these results is explained from minor differences in the stimulus presentation procedure and possible overlap of ERP components of opposite polarity. Temporal principal component analysis (PCA) confirmed the separate influence of concurrent LPP and N400 ERP modulations, and the source of the largest factors was located using sLORETA. It is suggested that the increased N400 in response to trait inconsistencies reflects difficulties in understanding unanticipated behavior, while the LPP effect might reflect evaluative incongruence.

Higher incentives can impair performance: neural evidence on reinforcement and rationality

Standard economic thinking postulates that increased monetary incentives should increase performance. Human decision makers, however, frequently focus on past performance, a form of reinforcement learning occasionally at odds with rational decision making. We used an incentivized belief-updating task from economics to investigate this conflict through measurements of neural correlates of reward processing. We found that higher incentives fail to improve performance when immediate feedback on decision outcomes is provided. Subsequent analysis of the feedback-related negativity, an early event-related potential following feedback, revealed the mechanism behind this paradoxical effect. As incentives increase, the win/lose feedback becomes more prominent, leading to an increased reliance on reinforcement and more errors. This mechanism is relevant for economic decision making and the debate on performance-based payment.

Neural correlates of the empathic perceptual processing of realistic social interaction scenarios displayed from a first-order perspective

The neural processing of impulsive behavior is a central topic in various clinical and non-clinical contexts. To investigate neural and behavioral correlates of the empathic processing of complex social scenarios, especially considering ecological validity of the experimental procedure, we developed and investigated a video stimulus inventory. It includes realistic neutral, social-positive, and reactive-aggressive action scenarios. Short video-clips showing these social scenarios from a first-person perspective triggering different emotional states were presented to a non-clinical sample of 20 young adult male participants during fMRI measurements. Both affective interaction conditions (social-positive and reactive-aggressive) were contrasted against a neutral baseline condition and against each other. Behavioral evaluation data largely confirmed the validity of the emotion-inducing stimulus material. Reactive-aggressive and social-positive interaction scenarios produced widely overlapping fMRI activation patterns in hetero-modal association cortices, but also in subcortical regions, such as the peri-aqueductal gray. Reactive-aggressive compared to social-positive scenarios yielded a more anterior distribution of activations in pre-motor and inferior frontal brain regions associated to motor-preparation and inhibitory control processing as well as in the insula associated to pain- and/or aversion-processing. We argue that there are both principally common neural networks recruited for the processing of reactive-aggressive and social-positive scenarios, but also exclusive network parts in particular involved depending on individual socialization.

Detecting gender before you know it: How implementation intentions control early gender categorization

Gender categorization is highly automatic. Studies measuring ERPs during the presentation of male and female faces in a categorization task showed that this categorization is extremely quick (around 130ms, indicated by the N170). We tested whether this automatic process can be controlled by goal intentions and implementation intentions. First, we replicated the N170 modulation on gender-incongruent faces as reported in previous research. This effect was only observed in a task in which faces had to be categorized according to gender, but not in a task that required responding to a visual feature added to the face stimuli (the color of a dot) while gender was irrelevant. Second, it turned out that the N170 modulation on gender-incongruent faces was altered if a goal intention was set that aimed at controlling a gender bias. We interpret this finding as an indicator of nonconscious goal pursuit. The N170 modulation was completely absent when this goal intention was furnished with an implementation intention. In contrast, intentions did not alter brain activity at a later time window (P300), which is associated with more complex and rather conscious processes. In line with previous research, the P300 was modulated by gender incongruency even if individuals were strongly involved in another task, demonstrating the automaticity of gender detection. We interpret our findings as evidence that automatic gender categorization that occurs at a very early processing stage can be effectively controlled by intentions.