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How to Act Without Relying on Motivation: If-Then Plans Across 94 Studies

Hiroki ObaraHiroki Obara · DeveloperBrain MondoBrainDojo
How to Act Without Relying on Motivation: If-Then Plans Across 94 Studies

Decide in advance when, where and what you will do, in the form “if X happens, I will do Y”. This “implementation intention” had a medium-to-large effect on reaching goals. That is the result of a meta-analysis of 94 tests, published in Advances in Experimental Social Psychology in 2006.

In a Brain Mondo short video, I introduced this research in about 40 seconds. In this post I write about what an implementation intention is, why it is thought to work, and the situations where later research found it works less well.

Video: Psychology facts: Implementation intentions (Japanese)

The video is in Japanese.

Having a goal is not enough

You decide to exercise, or to study every day, and then at night you notice you have done nothing. This is a familiar experience.

The psychologists who wrote the paper, Gollwitzer and Sheeran, start from this point. Having a strong goal does not by itself guarantee reaching it, because on the way to a goal people run into problems in managing themselves.

There are several ways to stumble. You miss the moment to start. You start, but get pulled away by other temptations or interruptions. You stick with an approach that is not working and cannot let go of it. Or you use up your strength partway through. Action stops for reasons that have nothing to do with how strong the goal is.

This is where implementation intentions come in. On top of the goal “exercise”, you write the situation that will trigger the action and the action you will take as one sentence in advance, such as “When I finish breakfast, I will walk for 10 minutes.” From its shape, people often just call it an if-then plan.

What studies were pooled

The meta-analysis collected studies that compared people who formed implementation intentions with people who did not, and combined their results. In total it covered 94 independent tests.

A typical experiment goes like this. All participants have the same goal. One group only has the goal. The other group also writes a plan in the form “If X happens, I will do Y.” Afterwards, the groups are compared on whether they acted, and whether they reached the goal.

The “if” part holds a situation you can clearly recognise: a time, a place or an event. Not a vague condition like “if I have time”, but a moment whose arrival is obvious, like “when I finish breakfast” or “when I sit down at my desk at work”. The “then” part holds an action you can take right there.

Result: a medium-to-large effect

Pooling the 94 tests, implementation intentions had a positive effect of medium to large size on reaching goals. The effect size was d = 0.65.

All you do is turn a plan into a single sentence. It costs no money and needs no tools.

The paper reports not only an overall effect but that implementation intentions helped with each of the stumbling points above: getting started on a goal, shielding the effort from unwanted influences once started, disengaging from an approach that is failing, and saving strength for later. In each, people who had formed implementation intentions did better.

Why it is thought to work

The paper gives two mechanisms.

The first is that the situation written in the “if” becomes more noticeable in your mind. Decide “when I finish breakfast”, and the unremarkable moment of finishing breakfast stands out as a cue for action. Without the plan, that moment simply passes.

The second is that the action written in the “then” comes out more or less automatically. When the cue arrives, you no longer need to reconsider, “Right, am I going to exercise now or not?” The fewer moments of reconsidering there are, the less your mood or motivation that day gets a say.

When the video said “without relying on motivation”, it meant this second mechanism. You settle the decision of whether to act when you make the plan, not at a moment when you may or may not have any motivation left. Implementation intentions bring a decision forward.

Where it works less well

Later research shows, though, that implementation intentions do not always work equally well.

A 2018 meta-analysis in PLoS One looked at 13 randomised controlled trials on physical activity in adults. Participants were aged 18 to 76 and had a range of conditions, including spinal cord injury, heart disease, obesity, diabetes, inactivity and work stress. Pooling the studies that reinforced the implementation intention plan, the effect size was 0.25. There was an effect. The studies and participants differ, so the figures cannot be compared directly, but next to the 0.65 from 2006 it is a fairly modest number.

A 2020 systematic review in the Journal of Physical Activity and Health asked who implementation intentions for exercise work for. What shaped the effect was habit strength, whether the goal fits your own values (self-concordance), your sense that you can do it (self-efficacy), your sense of control over the behaviour, and the strength of the original intention. Its conclusion was that implementation intentions are effective for people who already intend to be active and have strong self-efficacy.

One more, a 2021 meta-analysis in Frontiers in Psychology, looked at combining implementation intentions with “mental contrasting”, where you picture the future you want and the obstacles in the way. Pooling 21 studies and 15,907 participants, it found a small-to-medium effect. The authors also note that because of publication bias, the real effect may be smaller.

Easy to misread

What follows from this is that an implementation intention is a tool for turning something you want to do into something you can do. It is not a tool for making you want to do something you do not want to do. As the 2020 review showed, the effect is larger in people who already have the intention.

Also, d = 0.65 is the average picture across 94 tests. The kind of goal and the participants vary from study to study. In the 2018 meta-analysis focused on adult physical activity, the effect came out smaller. This is not a story of one if-then plan transforming your life.

Still, there is a view that a small effect adding up every day means something. Writing one plan takes almost no effort.

Using it in daily life

Here are three ways to apply this research to daily life.

  • Make the “if” a moment that comes every day. Use something that happens at about the same time every day as the cue, such as “when I finish breakfast”, “when I sit down at my desk” or “when I brush my teeth”. “When I have time” may never come, so it does not work as a cue.
  • Make the “then” small and concrete. Not “deal with email” but “reply to one email”; not “get ready for tomorrow” but “put my things in my bag”. If it is small enough to start on the spot, there is no room to reconsider.
  • Start with just one. Make many if-then plans at once and none of them stands out as a cue. As the video said, one small if-then beats a big resolution.

Brain Mondo is a series of daily short videos about the brain, each based on a research paper. BrainDojo is an app for training calculation, memory, attention and more in a few minutes a day, and each day’s menu is set up for you automatically as Today’s Training. You can also tie it to a daily moment, such as “when I’ve made my morning coffee, I open Today’s Training”.

References

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