Effective Goal Striving
Peter M. Gollwitzer
New York University/Universität Konstanz
Forming strong goal commitments is a necessary first step to securing goal attainment. For example, when people want to achieve success in the social, professional, or health domain, they are well advised to strongly commit to respective goals. However, strong goal commitments are not sufficient when goals are difficult to attain. For meeting difficult goals it becomes necessary that people make their goal striving particularly effective. But what can they do to enhance their goal striving and thus solve the typical problems of effective goal striving such as getting started, staying on track, selecting effective means, and acting efficiently? A promising answer is the following: People may plan out in advance how they want to solve these problems of goal implementation.
I will describe research showing that making if-then plans (i.e., forming implementation intentions) on how to deal with these problems is a very effective strategy. After a short report on research investigating how implementation intentions work (i.e., by automating goal striving), I will discuss the question of whether implementation intentions can be used to increase willpower on the spot. Research provides a positive answer to this question revealing that implementation intentions help people to meet their goals even when they are facing immutable hindrances from within (e.g., lack of cognitive capabilities) or from outside (i.e., difficult social situations or task demands that overtax executive functions); some research even shows that increased willpower can be observed in those samples (e.g., children with ADHD) that are known to suffer from impaired action control. I will conclude that forming implementation intentions is an easy to use self-regulation tool that should allow people to meet their goals – and this without engaging in major efforts of self-change or attempts to change their social settings.