Proceedings of the Annual Meeting of the Cognitive Science Society

Backup plans represent a safety net that can help ensure goal attainment. However, managing backup plans during goalpursuit can also deflect attention away from the initial plan. We examined how individuals sense of power, which is saidto facilitate goal pursuit, affects the extent to which one gets distracted by backup plans. Results from four studies showedthat when a backup plan was activated, greater sense of power was associated with lower self-reported distraction and betterperformance. Studies 2 and 3 further revealed mediating effects of distraction between sense of power and performance.Greater sense of power was associated with less distraction, which in turn was related to better performance. Our findingssuggest that when pursuing goals, individuals experiencing high power may be better at allocating their limited cognitiveresources to the initial plan.