The Best-Laid Plans? New Perspectives on Planning and Implementation Intentions.

Abstract

Consumers frequently experience difficulty regulating behavior to achieve goals like eating well, exercising, and saving money. Research has shown that implementation intentions – plans connecting situational cues and desired behaviors – are a useful tool to bridge the gap between one’s intentions and actions. However, recent work has also revealed that plans sometimes have null or deleterious effects, reducing goal achievement and possibly misallocating resources spent on pursuing ineffectual plans. Thus, it is important to understand the psychological processes and contexts that contribute to helpful (and not-so-helpful) plans.

In Chapter 1, I investigate processes that drive the effects of planning over time. I approach this question in two ways. First, the existing literature employs many ways of eliciting plans, yet relatively little work has examined how these may be the same or different from when individuals do not set plans. I show that how a plan is elicited changes the means which are focused upon: i.e., facilitative steps to reach a goal versus thinking about coping with obstacles. Second, I unpack a seemingly null X-Y effect of planning to reveal that changes in plan format influence intentions and action through indirect processes. In two field contexts, I demonstrate that if-then plans focused on obstacle-coping facilitate negative performance evaluations, producing changes in regret, outcome expectancies, and future performance. Experience further moderates the link between regret and outcome expectancies.

In Chapter 2, I study how planning influences forecasts. Planning and prediction are closely related; both involve trying to anticipate the presence and impact of future events. However, people frequently exhibit optimistic biases in their forecasts because they form them by constructing narratives of the future that do not consider barriers. Thus, do plans which encourage elaboration of ways to cope with obstacles change forecasts? To answer this question, I examine three types of predictions – future situations/actions, task durations, and anticipated emotions, and find mixed results for these contexts.

Together, these findings contribute to our understanding of the mechanisms that drive planning and lead to the generation of theoretical and practical recommendations to improve the consistency and reliability of planning for consumers.