Dataset Information

Supporting Sustainable Food Consumption: Mental Contrasting with Implementation Intentions (MCII) Aligns Intentions and Behavior.

ABSTRACT: With growing awareness that sustainable consumption is important for quality of life on earth, many individuals intend to act more sustainably. In this regard, interest in reducing meat consumption is on the rise. However, people often do not translate intentions into actual behavior change. To address this intention-behavior gap, we tested the self-regulation strategy of mental contrasting with implementation intentions (MCII). Here, people identify and imagine a desired future and current obstacles standing in its way. They address the obstacles with if-then plans specifying when, where, and how to act differently. In a 5-week randomized controlled experimental study, we compared an information + MCII intervention with an information-only control intervention. As hypothesized, only MCII participants' intention of reducing their meat consumption was predictive of their actual reduction, while no correspondence between intention and behavior change was found for control participants. Participants with a moderate to strong intention to reduce their meat consumption reduced it more in the MCII than in the control condition. Thus, MCII helped to narrow the intention-behavior gap and supported behavior change for those holding moderate and strong respective intentions.

SUBMITTER: Loy LS

PROVIDER: S-EPMC4850472 | biostudies-literature | 2016

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature

ACCESS DATA

Publications

Supporting Sustainable Food Consumption: Mental Contrasting with Implementation Intentions (MCII) Aligns Intentions and Behavior.

Loy Laura S LS Wieber Frank F Gollwitzer Peter M PM Oettingen Gabriele G

Frontiers in psychology 20160429

With growing awareness that sustainable consumption is important for quality of life on earth, many individuals intend to act more sustainably. In this regard, interest in reducing meat consumption is on the rise. However, people often do not translate intentions into actual behavior change. To address this intention-behavior gap, we tested the self-regulation strategy of mental contrasting with implementation intentions (MCII). Here, people identify and imagine a desired future and current obst ...[more]

PMID: 27199840

Similar Datasets

Project description:BackgroundRegular exercise can have positive effects on both the physical and mental health of individuals with schizophrenia. However, deficits in cognition, perception, affect, and volition make it especially difficult for people with schizophrenia to plan and follow through with their exercising intentions, as indicated by poor attendance and high drop-out rates in prior studies. Mental Contrasting and Implementation Intentions (MCII) is a well-established strategy to support the enactment of intended actions. This pilot study tests whether MCII helps people with schizophrenia in highly structured or autonomy-focused clinical hospital settings to translate their exercising intentions into action.MethodsThirty-six inpatients (eleven women) with a mean age of 30.89 years (SD = 11.41) diagnosed with schizophrenia spectrum disorders from specialized highly structured or autonomy-focused wards were randomly assigned to two intervention groups. In the equal contact goal intention control condition, patients read an informative text about physical activity; they then set and wrote down the goal to attend jogging sessions. In the MCII experimental condition, patients read the same informative text and then worked through the MCII strategy. We hypothesized that MCII would increase attendance and persistence relative to the control condition over the course of four weeks and this will be especially be the case when applied in an autonomy-focused setting compared to when applied in a highly structured setting.ResultsWhen applied in autonomy-focused settings, MCII increased attendance and persistence in jogging group sessions relative to the control condition. In the highly structured setting, no differences between conditions were found, most likely due to a ceiling effect. These results remained even when adjusting for group differences in the pre-intervention scores for the control variables depression (BDI), physical activity (IPAQ), weight (BMI), age, and education. Whereas commitment and physical activity apart from the jogging sessions remained stable over the course of the treatment, depression and negative symptoms were reduced. There were no differences in pre-post treatment changes between intervention groups.ConclusionsThe intervention in the present study provides initial support for the hypothesis that MCII helps patients to translate their exercising intentions into real-life behavior even in autonomously-focused settings without social control.Trial registrationClinicalTrials.gov ID; URL: NCT01547026 Registered 3 March 2012.

Dataset Information

Supporting Sustainable Food Consumption: Mental Contrasting with Implementation Intentions (MCII) Aligns Intentions and Behavior.

Publications

Supporting Sustainable Food Consumption: Mental Contrasting with Implementation Intentions (MCII) Aligns Intentions and Behavior.

Similar Datasets

OmicsDI is part of the ELIXIR infrastructure

Tweets