Peter Gollwitzer

Who is Peter Gollwitzer?

Peter Gollwitzer is a professor of psychology in the Psychology Department at New York University. His research centers on how goals and plans affect cognition, emotion, and behavior.

Gollwitzer has developed several models of action control: the Theory of Symbolic Self-Completion; the Rubicon Model of Action Phases; the Auto-Motive Model of Automatic Goal Striving; the Mindset Theory of Action Phases; and the distinction between action control by Goal Intentions vs. Implementation Intentions.

Gollwitzer’s experimental research based on these models delineates the various underlying psychological mechanisms of action control, and it distills the respective moderators. His recent research uses previous insights on action control by if-then planning to develop powerful time and cost effective behavior change interventions; this work is rooted in the mental contrasting theory of goal pursuit as proposed by Gabriele Oettingen.

Prior to coming to NYU in 1999, Gollwitzer held the following positions: assistant professor in the Department of Psychology at Ruhr-Universitaet Bochum,; junior researcher, Max-Planck-Institute for Psychological Research, Munich; and senior researcher, Max-Planck-Institute for Psychological Research, Munich. In 1993 he became the chair of the social psychology and motivation unit at the University of Konstanz, Germany.