In the most recent issue of the journal Health Psychology, there are two studies that explored how we can develop and maintain more healthy snacking habits. Not surprisingly, knowing that it's good for us is not enough for long-term success.
Both of these new studies caught my attention immediately because they address basic issues of self-regulation and action control. They also focus on a key strategy that I've summarized a few times now, implementation intentions. Regular readers may recall that Peter Gollwitzer developed this concept as part of his psychology of action. In short, an implementation intention complements a goal intention by identifying when, where and what behavior will be performed to achieve the goal. An implementation intention is that in "situation X, I will do behavior Y to achieve subgoal Z." The accumulating research evidence indicates that the most effective implementation intentions seem to be in the form of an "if . . . then" statement. For example, "if class is finished, then I will return to my desk and finish editing the second section of my manuscript."
Both of these new studies about health behaviors involved implementation intentions in the design (in fact, Peter Gollwitzer was an author on the first of the two papers listed below). These studies explored how implementation intentions affected snacking habits.
In sum, what both studies demonstrate is that forming implementation intentions along with any other strategy that you might use, such as learning more about why fruit makes better snacks, increases the likelihood that you will eat healthy snacks in the long run. This was particularly impressive in the first study, as it was a 2-year longitudinal design where participants continued to eat more fruits and vegetables as snacks if they received some self-regulation training (as opposed to just learning about the benefits of consuming healthier snacks). In this case, the self-regulation training included the formation of implementation intentions as well as mental contrasting (elaborating the benefits of eating the healthy snacks and contrasting these to obstacles that may be encountered). The results clearly demonstrated that self-regulation training is important to creating long-term behavioral change over and above just learning that changing one's behavior is a good idea.
The second study was particularly interesting from an individual difference perspective because the researchers examined the interaction of weak vs. strong unhealthy snacking habits as well as regulatory orientation. As you might expect, their results revealed if you have a strong habit for unhealthy snacking (you keep a bag a cookies in your top desk drawer), you'll benefit more from making implementation intentions that match your regulatory orientation. Again, implementation intentions were shown to be a powerful self-regulatory technique to enhance health-behavior change.
Concluding thoughts
These studies underscore the importance of adding self-regulatory training to any health-behavior intervention program. Certainly, we all know from lived experience that simply knowing that something is good for us is unlikely to result in us changing long-standing patterns of action in favor of new health behaviors like eating healthy snacks. The power of implementation intentions (and mental contrasting, as was done in the first of the two studies) is that it helps us to bring conscious attention to our choices. This form of intention serves as a predecision for future action and puts a stimulus for behavior in the environment, thus helping us to break unconscious patterns of behavior. So, for example, instead of reaching for a handful of chocolate chip cookies, an implementation intention helps us to make an alternative choice of fruit instead.
I wonder if fruit cake counts here? Oh, yeah, no magic bullets for those of us who can rationalize just about anything! I'll eat something healthy tomorrow. I'll feel more like it tomorrow. Procrastination is always just around the corner when it comes to behavioral change. Unfortunately, procrastination is related to poorer health and well-being.
As always, a commitment to change - or a strong goal intention - is a necessary precondition for implementation intentions to be effective. You have to really want to eat a more healthy snack. Perhaps knowledge about the benefits of healthy snacks is more important than these studies imply. Future research needs to put more emphasis on what it means to "know" something as opposed to "realizing" it as a first step towards making strong goal intentions. If we can actually realize - make real in our lives - the importance of a healthy diet to creating and maintaining health and well-being, we will probably be in a good place to make effective implementation intentions. Where there's a will, there's a way.
References
Stadler, G., Oettingen, G., & Gollwitzer, P.M. (2010). Intervention Effects of Information and Self-Regulation on Eating Fruits and Vegetables Over Two Years. Health Psychology, 29, 274-283.
Tam, L., Bagozzi, R.P., & Spanjol, J. (2010). When Planning Is Not Enough: The Self-Regulatory Effect of Implementation Intentions on Changing Snacking Habits. Health Psychology, 29, 284-292 .
