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QUESTION-308: Do the process effects of implementation intentions, the immediacy, efficiency under load and running without conscious intent of the planned response and the better detection of its cue, survive correction for publication bias or preregistered replication, and do they mediate goal attainment rather than merely accompany it?

1 min read

Properties5
StatusOpen
Tagsmotivation, cognition, behavioral-integration
Linewill-organization
RefinesQUESTION-095 — Is leaving the result of a computation where it can be cheaply retrieved the same trade as amortizing the computation, and does one account of when it pays cover a crew's speed bugs, a record's filed arguments and a reasoner's reused inferences?
Cited as “bears on” byTHEORY-913 — In small fixed-effect meta-analytic pools without correction for publication bias, responses specified in if-then plans ran more immediately (d = .77, k = 7), held up under a concurrent cognitive load (d = .85, k = 7) and ran without conscious intent (d = .72, k = 3) compared with responses under a goal intention alone, and the planned cues were detected, attended to and remembered better (d = .80, k = 6); the authors read this as control of the response handed in advance to the cue

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Why it is a question

THEORY-913 holds the 2006 component-process estimates: large effects from one to seven tests each, pooled with fixed effects and no correction for publication bias, which the 2024 review found substantial overall (THEORY-918). Only cue accessibility and the strength of the cue–response link were tested as mediators, in two studies. If the savings of later effort hold, implementation intentions are the plainest case the record holds of a decision cached and reused at lower cost, which is what QUESTION-095 asks about.

What would answer it

The 2006 chapter’s sources pooled again with correction for publication bias, or a preregistered replication, showing the planned response faster, unaffected by load and running under subliminal cueing against goal-intention controls; and the processes tested as mediators of goal attainment, not only shown alongside it, for immediacy, efficiency and lack of intent as well as cue accessibility. Refuted if corrected or replicated estimates of the then-component effects fall to zero, or if plan effects survive with these processes blocked. More tests of goal attainment alone cannot settle it.

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