Does disclosing intention make it less likely that we act on it? No answer (yet), but a lot of reading…

Today I fell into this really weird rabbit hole on intentions and self-completion. My interest was first sparked by an article by Gollwitzer et al. (2009) on “When intentions go public: Does social reality widen the intention-behavior gap?”, where they find that disclosing intentions, if the disclosure is noticed by other people, can make it less likely that people act on the intention.

They explain it with “a premature sense of possessing the aspired-to identity” — that if others already think that we are something we are aspiring to, we don’t need to put in as much work any more to really become it as we might have if we had not disclosed the intention. Which goes against everything I thought I knew about public goal setting, and accountability that people then feel that, I thought, would make it more likely that they take action. And while Gollwitzer et al. (2009) discuss that future research is required to understand whether maybe the formulation of the intention is important (e.g. a focus on progress towards a goal vs a focus on the goal itself), I assumed that that research should have happened since 2009.

And it might have, but what I read about was then about “Striving for identity goals by self-symbolizing on Instagram” by Sciara et al. (2023), where they investigate medical and law students’ Instagram habits and find that students with strong but incomplete identity goals post a lot of symbols related to their aspired-to career, in a domain-specific compensatory way to restore self-esteem. They find “that people pursue self completeness not only by acquiring and showing off symbols of goal attainment but rather by collecting pieces of communication that demonstrate to others the alleged possession of the aspired-to identity (e.g., medicine emoticons and hashtags in the biography)“, and on social media, that collection even persists over time. But, “when completing their identity goal symbolically via social media, people should experience a substantial reduction of the motivational energy destinated to reach their goal due to their restored feelings of completeness—an energy that is dearly needed for facing the challenges that their long-term identity goals entail“. And here we come to what I was curious about (before I got distracted by the social-media-research-is-so-interesting sidetrack) “[s]uch downstream negative effects of self-symbolizing on goal striving have been demonstrated in studies on the reduced motivation to engage in identity-related activities such as the identity goal of acting green“. So displaying symbols of being “green” on social media makes it less urgent to live green in real life?

And that is what Lalot et al. (2019) investigate in “When does self-identity predict intention to act green? A self-completion account relying on past behaviour and majority-minority support for pro-environmental values“, where they write that “[r]esults revealed an overall positive link between self-identity and pro-environmental intention that was cancelled specifically at high levels of past green behaviour when a majority supported the participant’s pro-environmental values (i.e., when the self was complete).” So rather than becoming a habit, or something that continuously supports identity, there is a level of “good enough” when oneself (and probably the people around) just take the green-ness as granted and there doesn’t need to be any more of it. That is pretty scary!

Looking into articles citing the previous one, I found Schorn, A. (2024) on “Why should I when no one else does? A review of social norm appeals to promote sustainable minority behavior” where they find, in a review of 36 articles, “[f]or practitioners, emphasizing social change and highlighting majority approval are simple, low-cost strategies with great potential to induce compliance and encourage sustainable minority behavior without running the risk of backfire effects.”

And another one came up and caught my eye: Hoffmann et al. (2024) on “Carbon footprint tracking apps. Does feedback help reduce carbon emissions?” Turns out that yes — “the feedback given in a CFTA can reduce carbon emissions. We found a general decrease by 23%. The impact varies by consumption category, ranging from a 12% reduction in mobility to a 35% reduction in household activities. Moreover, individual traits influence the effectiveness of CFTA usage. Whereas a strong perceived green self-efficacy amplifies the feedback’s effect, a strong green self-identity diminishes it. Based on the results, it is recommended that decision-makers account for individual differences when endorsing such apps“.

Hoffmann et al. (2024) explains the finding of a strong green self-identity reducing the impact of the CFTA effects like this: “Presumably, consumers with high levels of green selfidentity have very elaborated knowledge and opinions about how consumption impacts the environment and climate. Consumers with high levels of green self-identity will therefore be less surprised by the feedback of their footprint and consequently the feedback will not bring them to new insights. Interestingly, this finding is in line, for example, with the effects of nudging, which are also particularly strong for consumers without clear preferences“.

So then is a green self-identity in general not helping to actually improve things? I found an article by Mahasuweerachai & Suttikun (2022) on “The effect of green self-identity on perceived image, warm glow and willingness to purchase: A new generation’s perspective towards eco-friendly restaurants.” which really seems to be about how to market (green-wash?) a restaurant to appeal to people with green self-identity so they get a “warm glow” feeling. They don’t make the connection to that line of thought, but I am wondering if that is part of the self-symbolizing that Sciara et al. (2023) wrote about when they are seen in such a space and can share it on social media?

Another really interesting article that came up is by Cakanlar et al. (2023) on “I will be green for us: When consumers compensate for their partners’ unsustainable behavior“, where they find that “high-relationship-power individuals compensate for their partners’ unsustainable behavior by acting in a more sustainable manner relative to their baseline tendencies, but low-relationship-power individuals do not increase their own sustainable behavior. This effect occurs because high-relationship-power partners feel more responsible for the reconstruction of the couple identity after it has been damaged by their partner’s unsustainable choice; as a result, they have a stronger desire to signal a positive couple identity (i.e., a positive couple sustainable identity)“. They find that this only happens for couples (not, for example, neighbours), and only related to bad sustainability choices (not other bad choices, like unhealthy behaviour). Here, a weaker green identity weakens the observed effect.

When I started reading, I was hoping to find a clear answer on how disclosure of intentions affects whether we actually act on the intentions, but it appears that there isn’t really a clear answer out there (yet). Or I haven’t found it yet. Or maybe it doesn’t exist, who knows…

P.S.: One article that came up and doesn’t really fit into the discussion above, but that I was really intrigued by anyway, is Zaman et al. (2025) on “Outfits Serve as Symbols for Overlapping Feminine and STEM Identity Goals“. There were times during my PhD when I was thinking a lot about how to present myself as both a serious scientist and a woman in STEM, and where I read fashion blogs that focussed on navigating expressing identity while also projecting professionality (it seems that most have since gone offline, but Corporette is still alive and kicking and full of adverts that I don’t remember from way back when). I wonder how much of that would be interpreted as symbols of self-completion discussed above, and if it even backfired in that it made me less motivated to pursue my goal because it felt like I was already closer than I was? I don’t really think so, looking back I worked pretty hard during that time, doing a Master of Higher Education in parallel to my PhD, stupid idea… Anyway, Zaman et al. (2025) find that “[a]pparently, there is no universal attire that represents the ideal match for symbolizing women in STEM who pursue both of the two identity goals“. “Since there is not one prototypical example of a feminine outfit, there is room for individual judgments and preferences. It could be that when women in STEM opt for an outfit considered as more feminine, they see more professional features in it because they consider themselves STEM professionals. In other words, a STEM woman might think that the outfit they wear has STEM features because it is worn by a STEM professional“. But of course, people have more than two identities, and also other considerations come into play, for example functionality of clothing in the lab or on a research ship… But Zaman et al. (2025) conclude that “[i]n our study, it was found that an outfit can also serve both femininity and STEM professionalism. Our findings also contradict the commonly held notion that professional women must adhere to a particular dress code. Rather, it is important for women to feel a sense of belonging and identification with both their STEM profession and femininity in order to select clothing that they will feel comfortable in.” Which is a bit unsatisfactory, because the struggle with clothing choices comes from the struggle with a feeling of not belonging and identifying in the first place… But fascinating that there is research on this (and apparently quite a lot more, judging from the references in this article!). I am intrigued…

Cakanlar, A., Nikolova, H., & Nenkov, G. Y. (2023). I will be green for us: When consumers compensate for their partners’ unsustainable behavior. Journal of Marketing Research, 60(1), 110-129.

Gollwitzer, P. M., Sheeran, P., Michalski, V., & Seifert, A. E. (2009). When intentions go public: Does social reality widen the intention-behavior gap?. Psychological science, 20(5), 612-618.

Hoffmann, S., Lasarov, W., Reimers, H., & Trabandt, M. (2024). Carbon footprint tracking apps. Does feedback help reduce carbon emissions?. Journal of Cleaner Production, 434, 139981.

Lalot, F., Quiamzade, A., Falomir-Pichastor, J. M., & Gollwitzer, P. M. (2019). When does self-identity predict intention to act green? A self-completion account relying on past behaviour and majority-minority support for pro-environmental values. Journal of Environmental Psychology, 61, 79-92.

Mahasuweerachai, P., & Suttikun, C. (2022). The effect of green self-identity on perceived image, warm glow and willingness to purchase: A new generation’s perspective towards eco-friendly restaurants. Sustainability, 14(17), 10539.

Schorn, A. (2024). Why should I when no one else does? A review of social norm appeals to promote sustainable minority behavior. Frontiers in Psychology, 15, 1415529.

Sciara, S., Contu, F., Regalia, C., & Gollwitzer, P. M. (2023). Striving for identity goals by self-symbolizing on Instagram. Motivation and Emotion, 47(6), 965-989.

Zaman, S., Spychalska‐Waszek, H., Doerflinger, J. T., Gollwitzer, P. M., & Byrka, K. (2025). Outfits Serve as Symbols for Overlapping Feminine and STEM Identity Goals. Scandinavian Journal of Psychology, 66(3), 411-428.

And today’s pictures, for everybody who has scrolled past that literature list, are from this morning’s dip. First, you will be pleased to see that the bench is back in its original position. That really makes the perspective easier when taking nice pictures!

And then some waves. No filter here! I LOVE the stark contrast between light and dark, and the clean lines of the waves!

As you will notice from the lack of capillary waves, not a lot of wind this morning!

But still so much movement!

I just like benches with a view…

And this little sailboat on its buoy. Looks almost sunny, doesn’t it? I can assure you that it was not…