Improving performance through implementation intentions: are preexisting response biases replaced?

Commonly, the focus of a planned behavior is to attain some future goal. An alternative to this type of goal-focused, or goal-oriented, strategy is to emphasize the action required to meet the goal rather than to emphasize the goal itself. Previous research has suggested that an action-oriented plan, also known as an implementation-intention strategy, increases the chances of successfully reaching an intended future goal with minimal effort by making conscious, deliberate behaviors automatic. We investigated whether, within a Simon task, an implementation-intention strategy eliminates the contribution of preexisting response biases or whether it acts in addition to them. Results of two experiments show that an implementation-intention strategy provides a specific performance benefit that is in addition to, but not in place of, preexisting response biases.