Intention-driven illusory behaviors: The importance of detailed vs. gist processing in remembering what you have done and what you have yet to do

Have you ever formed an intention to reply to an email only to find that, after a short passage of time, you cannot remember if you actually did send the email, or simply intended to? The present work examines the effect of gist and detailed processing on the ability to reduce these errors of intention-behavior conflation. As detailed processing involves encoding specific features of an event, we hypothesized that intentions or behaviors encoded in more detail would be more discriminable in memory, and thus, reduce the likelihood of producing intention-driven illusory behaviors. In two experiments, we used a hiring paradigm to posit a means of attenuating this effect. Experiment 1 demonstrated that processing intentions in a detailed manner reduced the proportion of illusory behaviors reported. Experiment 2 showed that this type of processing was most effective when it was done to keep track of behaviors. Methodological limitations of exclusively relying on behavioral data are discussed, as well as future directions to both extend current work to meet the demands of technological advances that reduce the necessity to engage in internal monitoring processes, and explore conditions wherein intention-driven illusory behaviors are actually less likely to occur.

Name thesis:degree_name

M.A.

Level thesis:degree_level

Thesis

Discipline thesis:degree_discipline

Psychology

Grantor

University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign

Year dc:date

2016

Author dc:creator

• Sunderrajan, Aashna

Contributors dc:contributor

• Albarracín, Dolores

• intention
• behavior
• gist processing
• detailed processing

Statement dc:rights

• Copyright 2016 Aashna Sunderrajan

Language dc:language

en

Handle dc:identifier

http://hdl.handle.net/2142/90655

OAI identifier oai:identifier

oai:www.ideals.illinois.edu:2142/90655