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Habit Formation
How Can Pledges to Improve Yourself Be More Effective?
New Year’s resolutions can undermine behavioral change.
Posted January 7, 2020
The first few days of January will find many of us pledging that in the new year we will make wiser choices, either personal (eat less, become fit) or professional (get to grips with digital systems). Research done by behavioral scientists has highlighted the pitfalls of these New Year’s resolutions and how to avoid them. Here is a handy reminder of how to go about it.
Staying the course: People seeking to change a particular behavior usually pick a symbolic moment to make a start, say Monday morning or January 1. But changing the habits of a lifetime requires perseverance and constant attention. As the day, the week or the year progresses, it becomes more difficult to keep this up.
As soon as they lapse into the behavior they wanted to avoid, many people feel all is lost and give up on even trying. There’s even a name for this phenomenon: it’s called the "what the hell" effect. The tendency to let go of all restraints as soon as firm resolutions are not met, obviously, will not help to achieve the change that was desired. It is important to persevere, especially after the setbacks that will inevitably present themselves.
Motivational expert and professor at Stanford University Carol Dweck found that how people explain their unwanted behavior makes a difference. Those who think this is what they are like will give up more easily while those who believe every human being has the ability to change and grow will pick themselves up, dust themselves off, and start all over again, as the song has it. This "growth perspective" is not only linked to the ability to acquire new knowledge and skills but also to the likelihood of long-term weight loss, for example. It also helps to emphasize the growth perspective when encouraging others to change a pattern of behavior.
Small steps will take you further: Many New Year’s resolutions aim for unspecific goals, such as "a healthier lifestyle" or "a better relationship with colleagues at work." But to achieve big goals, it is necessary to break a whole range of small habits. The dot at the horizon needs to be replaced by a number of action intentions. These are concrete and doable behavioral plans. If the where, when, and how is determined beforehand, this will pave the way to achieving the greater goal. "Every morning on coming into work I will take five minutes to chat with staff," could be one such concrete plan.
Professors Rob Holland (University of Nijmegen) and Henk Aarts (University of Utrecht) have shown what the impact of such interventions can be, for instance when it comes to getting people to recycle paper and plastic cups in the office. Staff who were told to first think about where, when, and how they could help the recycling process ("every time I go to the toilet I will put my rubbish in the recycling bin") were better able to change their behavior. Two months into the scheme each staff member went from 500 to 15 grams of paper ending up in the regular bin and from 10 to 2.5 plastic cups.
Set goals that will make you happy: New Year’s resolutions are often about giving up things you like to do (smoking, eating cake) or avoiding risks (overdraft). This will trigger a prevention focus, as Columbia University’s professor Tory Higgins calls it. This term refers to a way of achieving a goal which makes people tense and afraid to do the wrong thing. A promotion focus, on the other hand, will put the achievement of an important ideal center stage (to become fit enough to play with the children, to save up enough money for a big trip) which will make people happy when they succeed.
Research has found that setting "promotion" goals make individuals as well as teams and organisations more creative when devising different ways of achieving change because it shows that every little bit helps. To strive for an ideal includes the notion that not all is lost when something doesn’t go as planned. A diversity policy telling people they must make sure no one is discriminated against will only raise anxiety about getting it wrong. It has been demonstrated to be more productive to focus on what there is to gain, for instance by asking people to give everyone a fair chance.
Prioritize: Any change of behavior will be difficult, including small ones. It is not realistic to think you can tackle everything if only your list of resolutions is long enough. You will have to choose your most important goals. What on your list has the highest priority and what will you be willing to give up (for now). Prioritizing will make you more content when you have managed to achieve something instead of annoyed at not having done everything on the list.
These different pitfalls and ways to avoid them not only hold true for yourself, but also for others around you. Any attempts to achieve behavioral change will be more effective when taking into account these issues—not just in January but throughout the year.
