title: The Impact of Asking Intention or Self-Prediction Questions on Subsequent Behavior: A Meta-Analysis.
abstract: The current meta-analysis estimated the magnitude of the impact of asking intention and self-prediction questions on rates of subsequent behavior, and examined mediators and moderators of this question-behavior effect (QBE). Random-effects meta-analysis on 116 published tests of the effect indicated that intention/prediction questions have a small positive effect on behavior (d+ = 0.24). Little support was observed for attitude accessibility, cognitive dissonance, behavioral simulation, or processing fluency explanations of the QBE. Multivariate analyses indicated significant effects of social desirability of behavior/behavior domain (larger effects for more desirable and less risky behaviors), difficulty of behavior (larger effects for easy-to-perform behaviors), and sample type (larger effects among student samples). Although this review controls for co-occurrence of moderators in multivariate analyses, future primary research should systematically vary moderators in fully factorial designs. Further primary research is also needed to unravel the mechanisms underlying different variants of the QBE.
authors.affiliation: University of Sheffield, UK chantelle.wood@sheffield.ac.uk.
authors.forename: Chantelle
authors.initials: C
authors.lastname: Wood
authors.affiliation: University of Leeds, UK.
authors.forename: Mark
authors.initials: M
authors.lastname: Conner
authors.affiliation: University of Sussex, UK.
authors.forename: Eleanor
authors.initials: E
authors.lastname: Miles
authors.affiliation: University of Leeds, UK.
authors.forename: Tracy
authors.initials: T
authors.lastname: Sandberg
authors.affiliation: Macquarie University, Sydney, Australia.
authors.forename: Natalie
authors.initials: N
authors.lastname: Taylor
authors.affiliation: Laval University, Quebec City, Quebec, Canada.
authors.forename: Gaston
authors.initials: G
authors.lastname: Godin
authors.affiliation: University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, USA.
authors.forename: Paschal
authors.initials: P
authors.lastname: Sheeran
mesh_terms: D001290:Attitude; D032763:Behavior Control / Q000379:methods; D005544:Forecasting; D006801:Humans; D033182:Intention; D012928:Social Desirability; D013334:Students / Q000523:psychology*
keywords: behavior change; mere-measurement effect; meta-analysis; question–behavior effect; self-prophecy effect