To plan or not to plan? Goal achievement or interrupting the performance of mundane behaviors

The present experiment investigated cognitive and behavioral effects of pla nning (i.e. forming implementation intentions) on goal pursuit during the p erformance of mundane behaviors. Participants received the goal to collect a coupon halfway the hall from the lab to the cafeteria. Later, they were a lso given the task to go from the lab to the cafeteria. Thus participants h ad to attain a new goal by interrupting a mundane behavior. Some participan ts enriched their goal with implementation intentions, others did not. Resu lts showed that participants who formed implementation intentions were more effective in goal pursuit than the control group. Importantly, the data su ggest that the effects of planning on goal completion are mediated by a hei ghtened mental accessibility of environmental cues related to the goal comp letion task. Copyright (C) 1999 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.