Implementation intentions and goal achievement: a meta-analysis of effects and processes

“Although accumulated research supports this idea (e.g., Armitage & Conner, 2001; Sheeran, 2002; Sutton, 1998), there is also contrary evidence that gives credence to the proverb that ‘‘the road to hell is paved with good intentions’’ (Orbell & Sheeran, 1998; Sheeran, 2002).”

“One explanation for this disparity is that people fail to notice that now is the time to act (Gollwitzer & Sheeran, 2006).”

“Although, Use follow-up prompts and Prompt review of behavioral goals may be effective via a different mechanism, essentially, they may offer important control strategies (Gollwitzer & Sheeran, 2006; Heckhausen et al., 2010).”

“Adults involved in PD may not have been aware of a gap between positive behavioral intentions and behavioral performance and the methods needed to bridge this gap, such as goal-setting techniques [79].”

“A potential drawback is that the researcher does not know the cost of effort (and perhaps not even the sign of the effort cost; Gross et al., 2015 ) for participants, so that testing theories is more challenging.”

“Regular daily routines facilitate and frequent task interruptions impede remembering and implementing intended behaviours [30], so we assumed that both factors affect overreporting.”

“Many studies investigating the effects of action planning on different behaviours could demonstrate its usefulness for behaviour and behaviour change (Gollwitzer & Sheeran, 2006 ).”

“Recent research suggests that the formulation of concrete ifthen plans facilitates the enactment of good intentions ( Gollwitzer & Sheeran 2006, Sniehotta et al. 2005b).”

“…or engage in a certain behavior does not normally suffice for that behavior to be implemented and the goal to be realized (Gollwitzer & Bargh, 1996; Gollwitzer & Sheeran, 2006; Heckhausen, 1989; Definition From this perspective, actions can be defined as all activities directed toward an…”

“Summarizing the available data, a meta-analysis of 94 studies conducted by Gollwitzer and Sheeran (2006) indicated that action plans/implementation intentions had an overall effect size of .65 on goal attainment.”

“A recent meta-analysis confirmed that people who supplemented their goals with implementation intentions had significantly better success (Gollwitzer & Sheeran, 2006).”

“Meta-analyses and systematic reviews have shown support for the effects of self-efficacy and planning on health behaviours (Ashford, Edmunds, & French, 2010; Gollwitzer & Sheeran, 2006; Kwasnicka, Presseau, White, & Sniehotta, 2013).”

“Research in psychology has demonstrated that prompting people to develop concrete plans to overcome specific obstacles makes it easier for them to perform a desired behavior [1, 3]; one area in which this has been shown is healthy eating [4].”

“There are a host of studies conducted in several domains, including work, education and health, demonstrating that goal completion is more successful when goals are furnished with implementation intentions, and, moreover, that the enactment of implementation intentions occurs rather automatically (for a review, see Go…”

“A meta-analysis based on close to a hundred studies on implementation intentions shows a medium to large effect on increased rate of goal attainment (d = .61; Gollwitzer & Sheeran, 2006).”

“…has formed the intention to perform a new behavior (and has thereby entered the volitional stage), this intention has to be maintained and translated into detailed instructions on how to perform the desired action by planning (Gollwitzer & Sheeran, 2006; Ziegelmann, Lippke, & Schwarzer, 2006).”

“…and procrastination is minimized, the self-regulation literature has theorized and demonstrated the effectiveness of cognitive self-regulatory mechanisms such as prioritizing, deadline-setting, and implementation intentions (Gollwitzer & Sheeran, 2006; Lord et al., 2010; P. Steel & König, 2006).”

“I’ll get up at 6 tomorrow morning and go for a run”) help to address this specificity issue—and the potential utility of these ‘implementation intentions’ (Gollwitzer & Sheeran, 1996) is discussed further below.”

“When respondents indicated to want to make a plan for a situation, a subsequent open-ended question helped them to formulate this plan in the form of an implementation intention (Gollwitzer & Sheeran, 2006) (e.g.”

“Simulating possible future obstacles and challenges provides the opportunity to make plans to overcome or avoid them (Taylor et al., 1998), which facilitates goal pursuit (Gollwitzer & Sheeran, 2006).”

“Gollwitzer and Sheeran (2006) called on considering the role of implementation intentions in modeling such relationships.”

“Research suggests that concrete intentions specifying when, where, or how an action will be performed are far more successful and efficient means for making good on our plans than just having abstract goals to perform some action some time (Gollwitzer and Sheeran 2006).”

“In addition to the HAPA, we used intervention elements derived from the Social Norms Approach [23] and implementation intentions, which are if-then plans that link situational cues with responses that are effective in attaining a desired outcome [24].”

“This idea of strategic automaticity achieved by if–then planning has been expressed in the social cognitive literature by Gollwitzer (1999) and Gollwitzer and Sheeran (2006) , who argued that making if– then plans that link an anticipated situational cue (the “if ” part) with an intended response (the “then” part) lea…”

“This complements prior theorizing [ 10 , 19] showing that volitional behavioral strategies may be instrumental in translating intentions into PA behavior.”

“A moderating influence of planning is also consistent with the rationale underlying implementation intention interventions, namely that asking people to form detailed action plans helps them to translate their goal intentions into action (Gollwitzer & Sheeran, 2006).”

“These studies have shown that planning is a feasible strategy to help people reach their aspired health behavioral goals [13].”

“…Bélanger-Gravela, Godin, & Amireault, 2013; Fennis, Adriaanse, Stroebe, & Pol, 2011; Webb, Sheeran, & Luszczynska, 2009; for a meta-analysis, see Gollwitzer & Sheeran, 2006), in promoting the adoption of new desired behaviors (e.g., eating more fruit and vegetables; Wiedemann, Lippke, Reuter,…”

“Research showing the benefits of implementation intentions on behavior is reasonably well established and the mechanisms underlying these effects have been tested and refined in recent years (see Gollwitzer & Sheeran, 2006).”

“A growing number of studies have applied implementation intentions to a wide variety of health behaviours including dietary goals, with a reliable degree of success (Gollwitzer & Sheeran, 2006).”

“In summary, implementation intentions have been shown to be remarkably effective in a variety of contexts and with a variety of individuals in helping them fulfill their intentions and accomplish their goals (producing on average a medium to large effect size; see Gollwitzer & Sheeran, 2006).”

“…control model, have been shown to be highly effective (Sniehotta et al., 2006; Sniehotta, Scholz, Schwarzer et al., 2005; Sniehotta, Schwarzer et al., 2005), although the body of evidence is not as extensive as the literature on implementation intention interventions (Gollwitzer & Sheeran, 2006).”

“This means that they become more likely to complete the intended activity when these cues are encountered [21].”

“If-then plans are highly predictive of successful goal striving and goal attainment ( Gollwitzer & Sheeran, 2006 ).”

“Even if an individual has a strong intention, they cannot fully guarantee the outcomes that they desire [11].”

“…person is cognitively burdened that implementation intentions are needed, as only the latter manage to automate action control (i.e., strategically create automaticity; Gollwitzer, 1999; Gollwitzer & Sheeran, 2006), thus allowing for high performances even under conditions of high cognitive load.”

“Prompts add the most value when people face obstacles to achieving their intentions.(6) As previously discussed, these include forgetfulness(42) and limited windows of opportunity to execute an action.”

“This would seemingly be a key link with automaticity (Gollwitzer & Sheeran, 2006).”

“05) [22], a sample size of at least 51 participants per condition was determined using the software G*Power 3.”

“A meta-analysis demonstrates that clarifying the when, where, and how of implementation intentions makes the individual’s initial commitment to a course of action more binding (75).”

“Many previous studies have demonstrated the positive self-regulatory consequences of setting goals and planning/ scheduling (e.g. Gollwitzer & Sheeran, 2006; Locke & Latham, 2002).”

“Numerous studies have shown that the formation of an implementation intention links the situational cue to the associated behavior (see Gollwitzer & Sheeran, 2006, for review).”

“Drawing on the self- organizational view and existing research on the action- phase model in psychology and entrepreneurship (Bindl et al., 2012; Gollwitzer & Sheeran, 2006; Gollwitzer & Bayer, 1999; Taylor & Gollwitzer, 1995), we now propose ways of associating the various action phases of the…”

“In order to develop and implement optimal as well as compensatory means to the selected goal, participants were required to write down specific if—then constellations of when, where, and how they would take steps toward the selected goal (Gollwitzer & Sheeran, 2006).”

“…of implementation intentions as a strategy to promote goal-directed action (Gollwitzer, 1993, 1999), their effectiveness has been demonstrated for various types of behavior, such as health-related, academic or prosocial behaviors (for a complete overview, see Gollwitzer & Sheeran, 2006, 2009).”

“The first is that one knows what to do, what the optimal behaviour is, and the second is that one is motivated enough to implement that behaviour [17].”

“People tend to remember better their intentions when specified in a when, where, and how manner (for an overview and meta-analysis, see Gollwitzer and Sheeran 2006 ).”

“Moreover, cognitive training for older adults might also be successfully adapted; for example, implementation intentions (e.g., Gollwitzer & Sheeran, 2006) have been shown to improve both prospective memory (dyslexiarelated deficits in this area have been self-reported by children, Khan, 2014, and…”

“There is ample empirical evidence that implementation intentions enhance the likelihood of goal achievement compared to goal-intentions (see Gollwitzer and Sheeran (2006) and Prestwich et al. (2015) for reviews).”

“Secondly, the cognitive representation of the link between specified situational cues and behavioural responses (implementation intention) enhances the accessibility of specified cues and automatizes the respective goal-directed responses mediated by cognitive processes [31].”

“In everyday life, implementation intentions are effective if opportunities and responses are viable, instrumental, and specified precisely (Gollwitzer and Sheeran 2006).”

“Is it possible to translate the results from research on goal setting (Locke and Latham 1990, 2006) and plan formation (Gärling and Fujii 2002)? What are the best ways of supporting people in forming plans for travel change (Gollwitzer 1993; Gollwitzer and Sheeran 2006)? Yet another prioritized area is to determine th…”

“After a series of efficacious applications, with meta-analyses demonstrating medium effect sizes (Gollwitzer & Sheeran, 2006; Sheeran, 2002), recently, reports of unsuccessful attempts have been surfacing as well (e.g. Jackson et al., 2005, 2006; Michie, Dormandy, & Marteau, 2004; Rutter, Steadman,…”

“First, if the tendency to engage in prospective thought during mind-wandering is implicated in the generation of more concrete goals, then during the mind-wandering task, future thinking should change in tandem with beneficial changes in goal descriptions; for example, there might be increases in the level of detail t…”

“However, intentions to engage in health behaviors may not directly translate into action (Gollwitzer & Sheeran, 2006; Webb & Sheeran, 2006).”

“A meta-analysis of 94 studies examining the effect of forming if-then plans (i.e. action plans also known as implementation intentions) on goal attainment showed a positive effect with a medium-to-large (Cohen, 1992) average effect size of 0.65 (Gollwitzer & Sheeran, 2006).”

“Implementation intentions are concrete plans that take the form ‘I intend to do X when I encounter Y’, and have been shown to have a medium-to-large effect on the attainment of goals (Armitage, 2004 ; Gollwitzer & Sheeran, 2006 ; Verplanken & Faes, 1999 ).”

“Evidence overall supports the effectiveness of planning interventions,(21) with metaanalytic research showing a notable medium effect size for planning interventions on health behaviors.(22) More specifically, recent reviews on intervention studiesdocumented the effects of actionplanning ondietary behavior, including…”

“…since been subject to further attempts at refinement (most notably the addition of implementation intentions, e.g., Gollwitzer, 1999; Gollwitzer & Sheeran, 2006; Orbell, Hodgkins, & Sheeran, 1997), and debates about the utility of the model continue (Ajzen, 2015; Armitage, 2015; Cooke, Dahdah,…”

“As recently reported in a meta-analysis, implementation intentions facilitate the attainment of all kinds of goals (e.g., academic, health, and interpersonal goals; Gollwitzer & Sheeran, 2006).”

“Implemental planning has proven useful for goals ranging from exercising (Prestwich, Lawton, and Conner 2003) and smoking cessation (Armitage and Arden 2008), to recycling (Holland, Aarts, and Langendam 2006) and academic achievement (Bayer and Gollwitzer 2007).”

“Implementation intentions are if–then statements detailing the when, where, and how of goal attainment and have consistently been found to enhance the implementation of a new behavior (Gollwitzer & Sheeran, 2006), and (3) participants were given a reminder flyer to post in their home.”

“Connecting a goal intention with a specific situational cue to action can increase individuals’ likelihood of goal attainment as exposure to these situational cues serve to elicit behavioral response automatically [31].”