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Improving performance through implementation intentions: Are preexisting response biases replaced?

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Abstract

Commonly, the focus of a planned behavior is to attain some future goal. An alternative to this type of goalfocused, or goal-oriented, strategy is to emphasize the action required to meet the goal rather than to emphasize the goal itself. Previous research has suggested that an action-oriented plan, also known as an implementationintention strategy, increases the chances of successfully reaching an intended future goal with minimal effort by making conscious, deliberate behaviors automatic. We investigated whether, within a Simon task, an implementation-intention strategy eliminates the contribution of preexisting response biases or whether it acts in addition to them. Results of two experiments show that an implementation-intention strategy provides a specific performance benefit that is in addition to, but not in place of, preexisting response biases.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Psychological Sciences, Purdue University, 47907-1364, West Lafayette, IN

    James D. Miles & Robert W. Proctor

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  1. James D. Miles
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  2. Robert W. Proctor
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Correspondence to James D. Miles.

Additional information

The research described in the present article was supported in part by NIA Grant R01 AG021071.

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Miles, J.D., Proctor, R.W. Improving performance through implementation intentions: Are preexisting response biases replaced?. Psychonomic Bulletin & Review 15, 1105–1110 (2008). https://doi.org/10.3758/PBR.15.6.1105

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.3758/PBR.15.6.1105

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