title: On the representation of intentions: do personally relevant consequences determine activation?
abstract: The intention-superiority effect describes shorter latencies for reactions to stimuli intended for future enactment, relative to stimuli associated with no enactment or canceled enactment. Previous attempts to demonstrate an intention-superiority effect for other types of tasks--for instance, observing the experimenter executing actions--have not yielded an intention-superiority effect. A reason for this could be that the typical enactment task was associated with a higher degree of personal relevance than were other laboratory-based tasks and that task importance or its consequences heighten the accessibility of intention-relevant materials. In two experiments, we demonstrate an intention-superiority effect for different types of tasks (e.g., monitoring a video clip) when task realization has personally relevant consequences in terms of a performance evaluation. In contrast, we found no intention-superiority effect when future enactment had no personally relevant consequences for participants. These findings imply that the intention-superiority effect is not restricted to actions but occurs generally for relevant plans.
authors: Institut für Psychologie, Friedrich-Schiller-Universität Jena, Am Steiger 3, Haus 1, 07743 Jena, Germany. janette.schult@uni-jena.de
authors: Janette C
authors: JC
authors: Schult
authors: Melanie C
authors: MC
authors: Steffens
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