The influence of willpower and implementation of intention on subjective evaluation of the level of achieving personal goals

Abstract

Introduction: An important factor leading to the achievement of planned goals is the power of will and implementation of intentions. This is explained by the concepts of Julius Kuhl and Peter Gollwizer. Aim of the research: To replicate the experiment of R. Kadzikowska-Wrzosek, referring to the impact of willpower and implementation of intentions on the subjective assessment of the extent to which personal goals have been achieved. Material and methods: The study included 61 first-year students of the master's degree physiotherapy course of the Jan Kochanowski University in Kielce. First, the respondents completed the Julius Kuhl's Action Control Scale (ACS-90), adapted in Polish by Magdalena Marszal-Wisniewska. The AOD/SOD and the AOF/SOF subscales were used to divide the subjects into two groups: state orientation and action orientation. Respondents were assigned to one of the two groups: Implementation (where the goal was planned to be pursued) and No Implementation. Results: It was confirmed that the subjective evaluation of goal implementation progress is explained by will power and is not significantly explained by the implementation of intention. Moreover, an interacting effect of the implementation of intentions and willpower in decision-making situations (AOD) was obtained, consisting of the fact that in the no-implementation group, willpower was not important for evaluating the achievement of the objective, whereas in the implementation group, higher willpower was conducive to a higher assessment of achieving the objective. These results are not fully consistent with the outcome of R. Kadzikowska-Wrzosek's experiment. Conclusions: Based on the qualitative analysis of the goals, it can be concluded that with regard to the implementation affecting or not affecting the goal achievement evaluation, the study result was related to the specific nature of the goals, which were highly similar in persons implementing and not implementing those goals.