ARMITAGE, C. J. (2009). Effectiveness of experimenter-provided and self-generated implementation intentions to reduce alcohol consumption in a sample of the general population: A randomized exploratory trial. Health Psychology, 28(545-553).

Abstract:
Objective: To test the effectiveness of implementation intentions to decrease alcohol consumption and control for possible demand characteristics by employing an active control condition and contrasting experimenter-provided with self-generated implementation intentions.

Design: Two hundred forty-eight participants were randomly allocated to I of 4 conditions: questionnaire-only; questionnaire plus planning instruction; questionnaire, planning instruction plus experimenter-provided implementation intention; or questionnaire, planning instruction plus self-generated implementation intention. Main Outcome Measure: Alcohol intake.

Results: There were clinically and statistically significant decreases in alcohol consumption in the 2 experimental conditions, but not in the 2 control conditions, F(3, 237) = 3.34, p < .05, eta(2)(p) = .04 There were no significant differences between experimenter-provided and self-generated implementation intentions (p = .62). Compliance moderated the effects of self-generated implementation intentions only, such that alcohol intake only significantly decreased in participants who complied with the instructions, F(l, 52) = 4.20, p < .05, eta(2)(p) = .07. However, simply choosing an experimenter-provided implementation intention was just as effective as writing it out in full, implying that implementation intentions work even with minimal information processing.

Conclusion: The findings further support use of implementation intentions to protect against health risk behaviors and are congruent with laboratory research showing that implementation intentions are a case of strategic automaticity.





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Last update: 21 Oct 2010