Implementation intentions are somewhat more effective in promoting healthy eating than in diminishing unhealthy eating, although for some studies promoting healthy eating effect sizes may have been inflated due to less than optimal control conditions.

Background: Procrastination is a prevalent and problematic phenomenon that has mostly been studied in the domain of academic behavior. The current study shows that procrastination may also lead to harmful outcomes in the area of health behavior, introducing bedtime procrastination as an important factor related to getting insufficient sleep and consequently affecting individual well-being. Bedtime procrastination is defined as failing to go to bed at the intended time, while no external circumstances prevent a person from doing so.Methods: To empirically support the conceptual introduction of bedtime procrastination, an online survey study was conducted among a community sample (N = 177). The relationship between bedtime procrastination and individual difference variables related to self-regulation and general procrastination was assessed. Moreover, it was investigated whether bedtime procrastination was a predictor of self-reported sleep outcomes (experienced insufficient sleep, hours of sleep, fatigue during the day).Results: Bedtime procrastination was negatively associated with self-regulation: people who scored lower on self-regulation variables reported more bedtime procrastination. Moreover, self-reported bedtime procrastination was related to general reports of insufficient sleep above and beyond demographics and self-regulation.Conclusions: Introducing a novel domain in which procrastinators experience problems, bedtime procrastination appears to be a prevalent and relevant issue that is associated with getting insufficient sleep.

Implementation intentions promote acting on one's good intentions. But does specifying where and when to act also suffice when goals involve complex change that requires not merely initiating a behavior but rather substituting a habit with a new response? In a pilot study and two experiments, the authors investigated the efficacy of implementation intentions to replace unhealthy snacks with healthy snacks by linking different types of cues for unhealthy snacking (if-part) to healthy snacking (then-part). The pilot study identified cues for unhealthy snacking, differentiating between situational (where/when) and motivational (why) cues. Studies 1 and 2 tested the efficacy of implementation intentions that specified either situational or motivational cues in altering snacking habits. Results showed that implementation intentions specifying motivational cues decreased unhealthy snack consumption whereas the classic specification of where and when did not. Extending previous research, for complex behavior change "why" seems more important than "where and when."

Getting insufficient sleep has serious consequences in terms of mental and physical health. The current study is the first to approach insufficient sleep from a self-regulation perspective by investigating the phenomenon of bedtime procrastination: going to bed later than intended, without having external reasons for doing so. Data from a representative sample of Dutch adults (N = 2431) revealed that a large proportion of the general population experiences getting insufficient sleep and regularly goes to bed later than they would like to. Most importantly, a relationship between self-regulation and experienced insufficient sleep was found, which was mediated by bedtime procrastination.

In two experiments a self-regulatory strategy combining mental contrasting with the formation of implementation intentions (MCII) was tested for its effectiveness in diminishing unhealthy snacking habits. Study 1 (N ¼ 51) showed that participants in the MCII condition consumed fewer unhealthy snacks than participants in a control condition who thought about and listed healthy options for snacks. In Study 2 (N ¼ 59) MCII was more effective than mental contrasting or formulating implementation intentions alone and mental contrasting was found to increase perceived clarity about critical cues for unhealthy snacking. Together, these findings suggest that MCII is an effective strategy for fighting habits and that one of the underlying processes making MCII superior to implementation intentions alone may be that mental contrasting produces clarity about the critical cues for the unwanted habitual behavior. Copyright # 2010 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.Maintaining a healthy diet is presently one of the most often adopted health goals (e.g., for the Netherlands see : Covenant Obesity, 2007). However, most people adopting healthy eating goals experience difficulties with changing their eating behavior (Jeffery et al., 2000). Acknowledging the problems associated with changing unhealthy eating patterns, the present studies tested a new approach combining two established self-regulation strategies (i.e., mental contrasting with implementation intentions, MCII), for its utility in fighting unhealthy snacking habits. MCII: MENTAL CONTRASTING WITH IMPLEMENTATION INTENTIONSMCII combines two established self-regulatory strategies (mental contrasting and implementation intentions) to form one powerful strategy for behavior change (e.g., Schramm, Oettingen, Dahme, & Klinger, in press;Stadler, Oettingen, & Gollwitzer, 2009). In mental contrasting people think about an important wish regarding behavior change (e.g., 'eating European Journal of Social Psychology Eur. J. Soc. Psychol. 40, 1277-1293(2010 Published online 3 March 2010 in Wiley Online Library (wileyonlinelibrary.com) DOI: 10.1002/ejsp.730 *Correspondence to: Marieke A. Adriaanse, Department of Clinical and Health Psychology, Utrecht University, PO Box 80140, 3508 TC Utrecht, The Netherlands. E-mail: M.A.Adriaanse@uu.nl 1 A snack is defined as any type of food that is consumed between the three regular meals (De Graaf, 2006). A focus on snacking was deemed relevant because identification of the cues that habitually elicit unhealthy eating (which is essential for formulating effective plans) might be difficult for snacking (Adriaanse, De Ridder, & De Wit, 2009). This makes changing unhealthy snacking habits difficult, and hence likely to benefit from MCII rather than from mental contrasting or from implementation intentions alone. Moreover, several studies have indicated that the consumption of unhealthy snacks is one of the main contributors to overweight (De Graaf, 2006;Zizza, Siega-Riz, & Popkin, 2001).Copyright # 2010 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd. Received 22 March 2009 ...