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In this paper, Maik Bieleke, Anna Hirsch, Peter M. Gollwitzer (with the Chair of Social Psychology and Motivation), Christian Wienbruch (with the Chair of Clinical Psychology) and Chair of Sport Psychology Members Julia Schüler and Wanja Wolff investigate the effectiveness of the widely used self-regulation strategy of if-then planning (i.e., implementation intentions) in down-regulating cortical activity in brain areas that are relevant for effortful self-regulation.

During a strenuous static muscular endurance task, that was performed until exhaustion, they observed an increase in brain activity in the dorsal and ventral parts of the lateral prefrontal cortex. This increase corresponds with increases in RPE, indicating an increased need for effortful self-regulation, in order to continue with the endurance task. Interestingly, while they did not observe differences between implementation intention and control participants regarding endurance performance and RPE, participants who had formed implementation intentions had lower activations in the dorsal and ventral parts of the lateral prefrontal cortex. This indicates that, compared to the control group, they had to rely less on effortful self-regulation during the endurance task.

At the chair of sport psychology, we are interested in the psychoneurophysiological correlates of self-controlled sports performance. Specifically, we are interested in how self-regulation strategies can be used to improve sports performance. (click here to learn more).