title: Improving performance through implementation intentions: are preexisting response biases replaced?
abstract: Commonly, the focus of a planned behavior is to attain some future goal. An alternative to this type of goal-focused, 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 implementation-intention 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.
authors.affiliation: Department of Psychological Sciences, Purdue University, West Lafayette, IN 47907-1364, USA. jmiles@purdue.edu
authors.forename: James D
authors.initials: JD
authors.lastname: Miles
authors.forename: Robert W
authors.initials: RW
authors.lastname: Proctor
mesh_terms: D000293:Adolescent; D000328:Adult; D001288:Attention; D003657:Decision Making; D005260:Female; D007839:Functional Laterality; D006040:Goals; D006801:Humans; D033182:Intention; D008297:Male; D009042:Motivation; D010897:Pitch Discrimination; D011597:Psychomotor Performance; D011930:Reaction Time; D055815:Young Adult