Instant habits versus flexible tenacity: Do implementation intentions accelerate habit formation?

Area of Science:

• Cognitive Psychology
• Behavioral Neuroscience
• Decision Science

Background:

• Implementation intentions, or "if-then" plans, are established tools for behavior change.
• These plans may foster habit formation by creating strong stimulus-response associations, leading to "strategic automaticity."
• The potential trade-off between automaticity and behavioral flexibility remains an open question.

Purpose of the Study:

• To investigate whether implementation intentions, while promoting automaticity, reduce behavioral flexibility.
• To assess the impact of implementation intentions versus goal intentions on instrumental learning and subsequent behavioral flexibility.
• To examine the consequences of strategic automaticity on performance during outcome revaluation.

Main Methods:

• A computerized instrumental learning task was administered to healthy young participants.
• Implementation intentions (if-then) and goal intentions (for outcome) were manipulated during instrumental acquisition.
• Behavioral flexibility was assessed using an outcome-revaluation test in between-subjects and within-subject designs.

Main Results:

• Implementation intentions facilitated instrumental learning.
• However, implementation intentions impaired overall test performance, particularly in the within-subject design.
• This impairment occurred irrespective of whether the outcome value changed, suggesting a broader negative effect.

Conclusions:

• Implementation intentions may hinder performance by negatively impacting stimulus-outcome learning.
• The findings suggest that the "strategic automaticity" fostered by if-then plans can reduce behavioral flexibility.
• Caution is advised when using implementation intentions in situations with uncertain behavioral contingencies.