Social distancing during the coronavirus-disease-2019 (COVID-19) pandemic is crucial to reduce the spread of the virus. However, its effectiveness hinges on adherence by individuals who face substantial burdens from the required behavioral restrictions. Here, we investigate sources of individual variation in adhering to social distancing guidelines. In a high-powered study (N = 895), we tested direct and indirect effects of boredom and self-control on adherence. The results showed that both traits were important predictors of adherence but the underlying mechanisms differed. Specifically, individuals high in boredom perceived social distancing as more difficult, which in turn reduced their adherence (i.e., a mediated effect). In contrast, individuals high in self-control adhered more to the guidelines without perceiving them as more or less difficult; however, self-control moderated the effect of difficulty on adherence. Our results are immediately relevant to improve the efficacy of social distancing guidelines in the COVID-19 response.

The self-regulation strategy of forming implementation intentions has now been studied for almost 30 years. We trace the development of this research and explicate the questions that have been addressed. We then present current research that investigates the consequences of implementation intentions for flexible goal striving, behaviour in situations for which one had not planned, and neuropsychological processes underlying the action control by implementation intentions. Next, we turn to novel applications focusing on how implementation intentions affect physical endurance and promote strategic information processing. Our review concludes with an outlook on future research on implementation intentions that covers emerging individual difference perspectives, innovative approaches to characterize underlying cognitive processes, and the prospects of integrating insights from related fields of research. As such, our review is an empathic call for addressing the many intriguing conceptual and empirical questions that still revolve around implementation intentions.

Understanding the structure, antecedents, and outcomes of students’ emotions has become a topic of major interest in research on mathematics education. Much of this work is based on the Achievement Emotions Questionnaire—Mathematics (AEQ-M), a self-report instrument assessing students’ mathematics-related emotions. The AEQ-M measures seven emotions (enjoyment, pride, anger, anxiety, shame, hopelessness, boredom) across class, learning, and test contexts (internal structure). Based on control-value theory, it is assumed that these emotions are evoked by control and value appraisals, and that they influence students’ motivation, learning strategies, and performance (external relations). Despite the popularity and frequent use of the AEQ-M, the research leading to its development has never been published, creating uncertainty about the validity of the proposed internal structure and external relations. We close this gap in Study 1 (N = 781 students, Grades 5–10, mean age 14.1 years, 53.5% female) by demonstrating that emotions are organized across contexts and linked to their proposed antecedents and outcomes. Study 2 (N = 699 students, Grade 7 and 9, mean age 14.0 years, 56.9% female) addresses another deficit in research on the AEQ-M, the lack of evidence regarding the assumption that emotions represent sets of interrelated affective, cognitive, motivational, and physiological/expressive components. We close this gap by evaluating extended AEQ-M scales, systematically assessing these components for five core mathematics emotions (enjoyment, anger, anxiety, hopelessness, boredom). Our work provides solid grounds for future research using the AEQ-M to assess emotions and their components in the domain of mathematics.

Purpose: This study aims to take a dual-process perspective and argues that peer influence on increasing impulse buying may also operate automatically. If-then plans, which can automate action control, may, thus, help regulate peer influence. This research extends existing literature explicating the deliberate influence of social norms.Design/methodology/approach: Study 1 (N= 120) obtained causal evidence that forming an implementation intention (i.e. an if-then plan designed to automate action control) reduces peer impact on impulse buying in a laboratory experiment with young adults (students) selecting food items. Study 2 (N= 686) obtained correlational evidence for the role of norms, automaticity and implementation intentions in impulse buying using a large sample of high-school adolescents working on a vignette about clothes-shopping.Findings: If-then plans reduced impulse purchases in the laboratory (Study 1). Both reported deliberation on peer norms and the reported automaticity of shopping with peers predicted impulse buying but an implementation intention to be thriftily reduced these links (Study 2).Research limitations/implications: This research highlights the role of automatic social processes in problematic consumer behaviour. Promising field studies and neuropsychological experiments are discussed.Practical implications: Young consumers can gain control over automatic peer influence by using if-then plans, thereby reducing impulse buying.Originality/value: This research helps understand new precursors of impulse buying in understudied European samples of young consumers.

Self-control does not always work effectively. Whether this reflects the depletion of a global self-control resource is subject to an ongoing debate. We turned to boredom as a potential confounding variable to advance this debate. In a high-powered experiment (N = 719), participants worked on a primary (transcription) task of varying self-control demands (low, high) and length (2, 4, 8 min), followed by a secondary (Stroop) task with low and high self-control demanding trials. In addition to trait boredom, we measured effort, difficulty, tiredness, frustration, and boredom after the primary task and repeatedly during the secondary task. Effort, difficulty, tiredness, and frustration increased with the demand and duration of the primary task; however, without affecting performance in the secondary task. Importantly, participants rated both the primary and the secondary task as boring, and higher boredom at the state and the trait level was associated with lower effort and higher difficulty, tiredness, and frustration. During the secondary task, boredom increased steadily but was generally lower in more self-control demanding trials. Finally, boredom predicted performance in the secondary task. These results show an intricate relationship between self-control and boredom that research on these two constructs should carefully disentangle.