Sources
Adjacent literature
Intentions and behaviour
- Sheeran, P. (2002). Intention–behavior relations: A conceptual and empirical review. European Review of Social Psychology, 12(1), 1–36. doi:10.1080/14792772143000003 Interpretation Frames the “intention–behaviour gap” that this model tries to picture: people who intend to act frequently do not.
- Gollwitzer, P. M. (1999). Implementation intentions: Strong effects of simple plans. American Psychologist, 54(7), 493–503. doi:10.1037/0003-066X.54.7.493 Interpretation The source of the “If [situation], then I will [action]” format used in the diagnostic card.
- Gollwitzer, P. M., & Sheeran, P. (2006). Implementation intentions and goal achievement: A meta-analysis of effects and processes. Advances in Experimental Social Psychology, 38, 69–119. doi:10.1016/S0065-2601(06)38002-1 Interpretation A review of evidence on if–then planning. The Gap Engine does not reproduce or rely on its effect sizes.
Progress and motivation
- Hull, C. L. (1932). The goal-gradient hypothesis and maze learning. Psychological Review, 39(1), 25–43. doi:10.1037/h0072640 Interpretation The original goal-gradient idea, that effort tends to increase as a goal gets closer.
- Kivetz, R., Urminsky, O., & Zheng, Y. (2006). The goal-gradient hypothesis resurrected: Purchase acceleration, illusionary goal progress, and customer retention. Journal of Marketing Research, 43(1), 39–58. doi:10.1509/jmkr.43.1.39 Speculation Loosely inspires the model’s “feedback” term. Treating feedback as curve steepness is this model’s assumption, not a finding of the paper.
Behaviour design
- Fogg, B. J. (2009). A behavior model for persuasive design. In Proceedings of the 4th International Conference on Persuasive Technology (Persuasive ’09), Article 40. ACM. doi:10.1145/1541948.1541999 Interpretation Describes behaviour as needing motivation, ability and a prompt together, with an “action line”. The Gap Engine’s threshold idea runs alongside it. The variables and the logistic form here are different and are not Fogg’s.
About the model itself
Fact The Identity–Action Gap model is independent, exploratory work by Sahil Tayal. It has not been peer-reviewed or empirically tested. The weights in the engine were chosen by hand for illustration.