Limits of Intentionality

How do people control their actions in order to serve their needs, desires, and goals? The fundamentals of intentional action control are a continuing topic of debate in social psychological research (e.g., Bargh, 2005; Bargh, Gollwitzer, & Oettingen, 2010; Baumeister, Masicampo, & Vohs, in press; Hofmann, Friese, & Strack, 2009; Morsella, Bargh, & Gollwitzer, 2009; Wegner, 2002) as weil as in philosophy (e.g., Bratman, 1999; Dennett, 1987; Holton, 2009; Mele, 2009; Roughley, 2008; Searle, 1983; Seebaß, 1993). Whereas previous psychological research focused more on the effects of the strength and the content of intentions on the success of action control (e.g., Bandura, 1997; Dweck, 1996; Fishbein & Ajzen, 1975; Higgins, 1997; Locke & Latham, 1990; Ryan & Deci, 2000), in recent years the focus has shifted to processes relevant to intentional action control (e.g., Baumeister, Vohs, & Tice, 2007; Brehm & Self, 1989; Carver & Scheier, 1998; Gendolla, Brinkmann, & Richter, 2007; Gollwitzer, 1999; Kuhl , 2000; Oettingen, Pak, & SchneUer, 2001). As a consequence, the limits of intentionality have become a pressing research question: For example, how do a person's bad habits limit the formation and execution of intentions geared toward overcoming unwanted habitual responses? The emergence of data relevant to the limits of intentionality reveals a subject whose complexity calls for an interdisciplinary approach to enrich the conceptual and methodological perspective of social psychological research on intentionality (see Grammont, Legrand, & Livet, 2010; van Lange, 2006; Vierkant, 2008). The present special issue of Social Psychology therefore aspires to bring together characteristic perspectives from different disciplines in an analysis of the limits of intentional action control. The contributions in this special issue cover a broad range of research pro grams, comprising several theoretical and empirical contributions from the field of cognitive psychology, developmental psychology, and motivation psychology, as weil as philosophy and neuroscience. A look at the 10 articIes of this special issue quickIy reveals the diversity of the different perspectives as weil as important conceptual and methodological similarities. Because we feel that the integration of different perspectives has the potential to propel research on the limits of intentionality, the articIes of the special issue are organized along the comprehensive categories of conscious and unconscious action control. There is a continuing debate about the contribution of conscious and unconscious processes to human action control. The central importance of unconscious processes for intentional action control has been highlighted in so me accounts that conceptualize them as "sophisticated monitoring and control systems that can guide behavior over extended periods of time in achanging environment, in pursuit of desired goals" (Bargh, 2005, p.43). The importance of conscious processes for intentional action control has been emphasized by research investigating the importance of conscious thought for successful action control (see Baumeister et al., in press). Significantly, the articIes in this special issue neither overstate the power of conscious control of action as sometimes has been the case in the European rationalist tradition and in cognitive psychology as weil (e.g., Loftus & Klinger, 1992) nor do they draw an overly pessimistic picture of conscious action control as seen in psychoanalysis and certain forms ofbehaviorism (e.g., Skinner, 1938). We feel that the concept of intentional action control as a mixture of conscious and unconscious processing opens an avenue to new empirical and conceptual research questions that have the potential to propel research on the limits of intentionality beyond traditional dual-process views.