Planning and the Control of Action

Planning has been found to have a powerful effect on human actions (e.g., Gollwitzer & Sheeran, 2006 ). But how do people plan? In this chapter we fi rst introduce implementation intentions (e.g., Gollwitzer, 1999 ) as an effi cient way of planning. Implementation intentions refer to specifi c plans in which individuals and groups can specify when, where, and how they intend to act using an if-then format (e.g., “If I come home from work on Fridays, then I will immediately put on my jogging shoes and go for a 30-minute run!”). After we examine how they support goal pursuit, we differentiate between spontaneous and strategic planning—two ways in which if–then plans can be made on the basis of goal-related knowledge. With respect to spontaneous planning, we highlight the importance of the accessibility of goal-related knowledge. We introduce goal systems theory (Kruglanski, Shah, Fishbach, Friedman, Chun, & Sleeth-Keppler, 2002 ) as a conceptual framework because it addresses the question of how goals can increase the accessibility of knowledge about when, where, and how to pursue the goal. To illustrate how the accessibility of goal-related knowledge facilitates goal attainment, we discuss a set of recent studies. They show that individuals spontaneously grasp goal-relevant information in the form of implementation intentions (Marquardt, Tröger, Wieber, & Gollwitzer, 2016 ; see also Marquardt, 2011 ) even if it is incidentally provided in their environment and that they use this knowledge to improve their goal attainment without being prompted to do so.