Torsten Martiny-Huenger

• Action control
• Attitudes
• Social cognition

Research interests: In general, I’m interested in human action control, attitudes/evaluations and their relation. With respect to action control, I do research on so-called if-then action planning (implementation intentions). If-then action planning is a specific kind of planning intended actions by mentally creating stimulus-response links. Whereas the effectiveness of such if-then plans in facilitating goal pursuit has been demonstrated repeatedly, I’m interested in the underlying mechanisms of how (verbal) thought creates these stimulus-response associations. I proposed and test a mechanism based on simulation theories of cognition (i.e., grounded/embodied cognition). This research touches topics like human agency, decision making and the dimension between seemingly automatic and more effortful processes.

On the attitude side of my interests, I’m investigating how if-then action planning could be used to strategically manipulate attitudes. Combining the associative capabilities of if-then planning with attitude theories that view attitudes as constructions from momentarily activated associations, I investigate how if-then planning can be used to create new positive or negative associations for an object, to influence the objects evaluation into a positive or negative direction, respectively.

Finally, I’m interested in how selection (/selection conflicts) influence evaluations of stimuli involved in the selection process as targets and distractors. I’m interested in the basic mechanism of how cognitive conflict induces evaluative changes and in the potential consequences of this selection-(dis)liking relation for socially relevant stimuli.

Contact information: torsten.martiny-huenger@uit.no, https://uit.no/om/enhet/ansatte/person