Forming Efficient Intentions for Goal Pursuit

Humans regularly form intentions to guide future behaviour, yet only a subset of intentions translate into effective goal pursuit. Research shows that forming context-specific implementation intentions improves goal attainment relative to more general goal intentions. However, existing theoretical accounts remain largely descriptive and lack mechanistic precision. We introduce a computational framework that formalises intention formation as prospective decision-making. Here, an intention’s effectiveness emerges from the interaction of three components: (1) the subjective value of the goal, (2) the context-specificity of the intended action, and (3) metacognitive regulation of goal pursuit. This framework explains when and why different intention strategies succeed or fail and yields normative predictions about optimal intention formation across motivational and environmental conditions. By integrating social, motivational, metacognitive, and computational levels of analysis, the proposed framework unifies decades of social psychology research on self-regulation and advances formal accounts of long-term planning.