Responding to subliminal cues: Do if-then plans cause action preparation and initiation without conscious intent?

Staats- und Gesellschaftswissenschaften

Bayer, Ute C.,, Achtziger, Anja, Gollwitzer, Peter M., Moskowitz, Gordon

Responding to subliminal cues: Do if-then plans cause action preparation and initiation without conscious intent?

Bayer, Ute C.,, Achtziger, Anja, Gollwitzer, Peter M., Moskowitz, Gordon: Responding to subliminal cues: Do if-then plans cause action preparation and initiation without conscious intent?, Social Cognition, 2009 (27): 183-201.

Originalarbeiten in wissenschaftlichen Fachzeitschriften mit Review-Verfahren

Forming implementation intentions (“If I encounter cue X, then I will perform goal-directed behavior Y!”) is postulated to trigger action initiation without further conscious intent once the specified cue is encountered (Gollwitzer, 1999). In two experiments using an injustice paradigm or a categorization task, critical situations (specified in the if-component) were subliminally presented and it was tested whether these situations influenced the preparation (Study 1) and initiation (Study 2) of the planned goal-directed behavior (specified in the then-component). After the subliminal presentation of the critical situations, implementation intention participants showed stronger action preparation and a faster action initiation, as compared to control participants (Study 1) who had not formed any goal intention at all, and compared to participants (Studies 1 and 2) who had onlynot formed respective if-then plans but goal intentions only. These findings suggest that forming implementation intentions leads to automatic action initiation without further conscious intent.

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