Question–behaviour effect: A randomised controlled trial of asking intention in the interrogative or declarative form

Abstract

Objective: This study investigated the question–behaviour effect of measuring intention in the interrogative or declarative form combined or not with a measure of moral norm.

Design: A sample of 762 participants was randomised according to a 2 × 2 factorial design.

Main outcome measures: Cognitions were assessed at the baseline, and physical activity behaviour was self-reported three weeks later. Results: At baseline, there were no significant differences on the studied variables. An ANOVA showed a significant interaction effect between the two experimental conditions (p = 0.04). Post-hoc contrast analyses showed that the interrogative intention-only condition significantly differed from the declarative intention-only (d = 0.21, p = 0.03) and interrogative intention + moral norm (d = 0.22, p = 0.03) conditions.

Conclusion: Results suggest that self-posed questions about a future action increases the likelihood of doing it when these questions are not accompanied by measures of moral norm. This provides support for using introspective self-talk to favour the adoption of behaviour.

Keywords:

• question–behaviour effect
• exercise
• moral norm
• randomised controlled trial

Acknowledgements

The authors declare that they have no conflicts of interest in the conduct and reporting of research.

Notes

Note

1. Three participants were considered outliers, since they reported much higher scores of LTPA at the three-week follow-up compared to the mean LTPA score of the sample (more than 3.5 standard deviations over the mean). However, the interaction (interrogative vs. declarative intention × moral norm vs. no moral norm) was still significant when these three outliers were included in the analyses (p = 0.05).