The interplay between goal intentions and implementation intentions

Two studies tested whether action control by implementation intentions is sensitive to the activation and strength of participants' underlying goal intentions. In Study 1, participants formed implementation intentions (or did not) and their goal intentions were measured. Findings revealed a significant interaction between implementation intentions and the strength of respective goal intentions. Implementation intentions benefited the rate of goal attainment when participants had strong goal intentions but not when goal intentions were weak. Study 2 activated either a task-relevant or a neutral goal outside of participants' conscious awareness and found that implementation intentions affected performance only when the relevant goal had been activated. These findings indicate that the rate of goal attainment engendered by implementation intentions takes account of the state (strength, activation) of people's superordinate goal intentions.     

Cross-modality matches between color and size differences

Eighteen undergraduates, 9 males and 9 females, were asked to make two geometric figures appear as different as two primary colors. They adjusted the size of one of the figures. There was a significant relation between the ratio of wave lengths of the colors and the ratios produced between the figures. Females tended to see a given color pair as more different than males.     

Smell and Taste Classification of the Same Stimuli

Much literature has suggested that people who are discriminated against or are in collectivist cultures are particularly susceptible to the social consequences of society. In the present study, the authors conducted 3 experiments to test how this factor influences attitudinal versus normative control over behaviors. First, they measured males’ and females’ attitudes, subjective norms, and behavioral intentions with respect to a large number of behaviors. Although between-participants analyses were mostly uninformative, within-participants analyses uncovered strong evidence that behaviors are more under attitudinal control for females than for males. Similar analyses in a crosscultural experiment involving participants from the United States, the United Kingdom, China, and Mexico support the hypothesis that behaviors are more under attitudinal control for collectivists than for individualists. Finally, experimental data collected in the United States and Saudi Arabia further support this conclusion. Taken together, the findings suggest that although social consequences are both “social” and “consequences,” the latter is more important than the former.     

Why does asking questions change health behaviours? The mediating role of attitude accessibility

Objective: The question-behaviour effect (QBE) refers to the finding that measuring behavioural intentions increases performance of the relevant behaviour. This effect has been used to change health behaviours. The present research asks why the QBE occurs and evaluates one possible mediator – attitude accessibility.

Design: University staff and students (N = 151) were randomly assigned to an intention measurement condition where they reported their intentions to eat healthy foods, or to one of two control conditions.

Main outcome measures: Participants completed a response latency measure of attitude accessibility, before healthy eating behaviour was assessed unobtrusively using an objective measure of snacking.

Results: Intention measurement participants exhibited more accessible attitudes towards healthy foods, and were more likely to choose a healthy snack, relative to control participants. Furthermore, attitude accessibility mediated the relationship between intention measurement and behaviour.

Conclusion: This research demonstrates that increased attitude accessibility may explain the QBE, extending the findings of previous research to the domain of health behaviour.     

Implications of goal theories for the theories of reasoned action and planned behaviour

This paper argues that the predictive validity of the theories of reasoned action and planned behaviour could be enhanced by considering key ideas from goal theories. In particular, goal theories highlight the importance of: (a) construing action as a process of behavioural selection designed to achieve actors’ goals, (b) assessing the extent to which people have planned how to perform action sequences implied by their goals (c) investigating goal conflict in order to understand intention-behaviour discrepancies (d) examining contextual variations in goal salience to account for the dynamics of choice, (e) using intention stability to index the prioritization of goals, and (f) analyzing the content of the goals underlying attitudes and intentions. Suggestions are made about self-report measures and computations that would permit greater use of these ideas in future research.     

‘They’ve invited me into their world’: a focus group with clinicians delivering a behaviour change intervention in a UK contraceptive service

Although teenage conceptions rates in the United Kingdom (UK) have seen a downward trend recently, it remains imperative that contraceptive services for young people continue to improve. To ensure that evidence-based interventions are sustained in clinical practice, it is useful to assess the experiences of those delivering them. This study explores the experiences of sexual health clinicians who were trained to deliver a one-to-one behaviour change intervention aiming to improve contraceptive use in young women. The intervention was set in a UK NHS contraceptive and sexual health service and involved clinicians’ facilitating (within one-to-one consultations) the formation of implementation intentions (or ‘if-then’ plans) that specified when, where and how young women would use contraception. A focus group was conducted with seven clinicians who had delivered the intervention. A thematic analysis of the focus group revealed three overall themes: (1) How the intervention worked in practice; (2) barriers and benefits to delivering the intervention; and (3) positive changes to individual consultation style and wider ‘best practice’ within the clinic. Our findings show that, with support, clinical staff would be in favour of incorporating if-then planning as a strategy to help promote contraceptive adherence in young women.     

Screening for trauma histories,posttraumatic stress disorder (PTSD), and subthreshold PTSD in psychiatric outpatients

The ability of the Structured Clinical Interview for DSM-IV (SCID) posttraumatic stress disorder (PTSD) module's screening question to identify individuals with PTSD or subthreshold PTSD was examined. First, the screen's sensitivity for detecting a trauma history was determined. Second, the incremental validity of a more thorough trauma assessment was examined by determining how many individuals responded negatively to the screen but then were diagnosed with PTSD or subthreshold PTSD. Last, the optimal SCID termination point for assessing subthreshold PTSD was determined. Using a trauma list increased the number of participants reporting a trauma; however, the SCID screen captured almost all individuals who had PTSD or subthreshold PTSD. When one screens for subthreshold PTSD, the SCID can be terminated on failure to meet Criterion B.     

Immoral,Incompetent, and Lacking Warmth: How Stereotypes of Teenage Fathers Compare to Those of Other Parents

Sex Roles - Constructions of teenage fathers largely portray them as absent, criminal, and violent (Johansson and Hammarén 2014; Kiselica and Kiselica 2014), with their identity tied to the...     

The dynamics of success and failure: how post-behaviour evaluations relate to subsequent exercise intentions and behaviour

Objective: Exercise behaviour change involves multiple experiences with success and failure. The Model of Action Phases (MAP) offers a dynamic account of how success and failure influence both immediate evaluations and future decisions and actions. However, predictions from the MAP have not been formally tested.

Design: A longitudinal daily diary study was used to examine how post-behaviour evaluations of exercise success and failure influence subsequent exercise intentions and behaviour. Participants (N = 104) set exercise goals, and then kept a daily online exercise diary for four weeks.

Main outcome measures: Participants self-reported exercise behaviour, affective response to exercise, self-evaluations after success or failure at following through on intentions to exercise, and intentions to exercise in the next week.

Results: Multilevel modelling revealed significant within- and between-participant relationships among post-behaviour evaluations, intentions and subsequent behaviour. Findings supported MAP-derived predictions about how success and failure at exercise are associated with feelings about exercise and the self, and inform subsequent exercise intentions and behaviour.

Conclusion: Positive post-behaviour evaluations of success or failure may stabilise positive intentions and aid maintenance of exercise behaviour. Implications of these MAP-based findings for intervention design are discussed.     

‘Coming out’ and sexual debut: understanding the social context of HIV risk-related behaviour

This paper explores HIV risk-related behaviour in the context of men's entry into the gay community. It is an exploratory study which employed a qualitative approach to describe men's accounts of the process of acculturation. Twenty in-depth interviews were conducted with working-class gay men from Barnsley, UK. These were translated and analysed, using interpretative phenomenological analysis, for recurrent themes which reflect the way gay men thought about HIV risk-related behaviour, ‘coming out’ and their sexual debut. As men began to socialize with other gay men in their local community they had much to learn with regard to local gay culture, e.g. a distinct new vocabulary and local sexual mores. By virtue of their lack of experience and the personal impact of first sexual experiences, some men reported feelings of disempowerment with their initial sexual partners. Theoretical accounts relating to gay men's sexual health would benefit from a consideration of the way gay men report the process of acculturation. Sexual debut and the particular vulnerabilities of entry into the gay community highlight a temporal context in which affective experiences are privileged above considerations of sexual health. © 1998 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.