January
18
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New year, same old new me: The science of making resolutions and (hopefully) keeping them
It’s that time of the year again. Time to set insurmountable goals and fail at the first hurdle, feel miserable at the end of the month and go back to our ‘less optimal’ selves. That’s right – I am talking about New year’s resolutions. Every year, millions of people around the world promise themselves to start a self-improvement activity (Figure 1), or break destructive habits right from the stroke of midnight on the first day of the new year. Despite their best intentions, they end up breaking these promises. What is it about New year’s day that makes us want to be better people? And more importantly, why do we fail so miserably? Let’s hope we can learn something from the fields of psychology and neuroscience of habit formation, so that this year we may be better equipped to achieve all of our resolutions, however insurmountable they may seem.
Why do we do this to ourselves?
The tradition of making New year’s resolutions dates back to the ancient Babylonians some 4000 years ago, though their new year started at Springtime in March during which they would plant new crops. This tradition continued into the Ancient Roman times, albeit it was modified to start on January 1 to coincide with the start of the new year as per the Roman calendar. What is it about New year’s day that has historically made humans want to set resolutions?
The fresh start effect
One of the main reasons for setting resolutions at the start of a new year can be attributed to the concept of “fresh start effect” as described by a landmark study [1]. By examining Google searches for ‘diet’, a university gym attendance records, and records of people signing up at a popular goal-setting website stickK.com, this study showed that people tend to start new activities and habits to meet their larger goals and aspirations at the start of a temporal milestone, such as New year’s day, or even a Monday, or the beginning of a new semester [1]. The authors attempted to explain the fresh start effect by hypothesizing that temporal landmarks compel people to overlook past imperfections. Previous research in psychology suggests that temporal landmarks help people to think about themselves as separate entities of a common continuum – in other words, we think of ourselves as a combination of our past, present and future selves. Any event, such as a birthday, marriage, or even life-changing events like an accident or a cancer diagnosis, acts as a landmark around which we tend to assess ourselves. Often, people consider themselves to be different from their ‘past’ (and ‘future’) selves, hence it is easy to attribute imperfections to a past self, thereby wiping the slate clean to begin afresh. Another hypothesis put forth by these authors purports that people switch their thought processes from thinking about day-to-day mundane aspects to big-picture thinking centered on life goals around temporal landmarks. Anyone who has celebrated a milestone birthday can anecdotally attest to this finding. While these hypotheses may be hard to disprove, the fresh start effect certainly explains why people like to set New year’s resolutions to systematically organize their self-improvement goals around a common societal temporal landmark.
Why do we fail to keep our New year’s resolutions?
One of the shortcomings of thinking in terms of big-picture is that we fall into the trap of thinking about goals and results, and lose sight of how to achieve them. While temporal landmarks may be good at priming one to think about a larger goal, maintaining high levels of motivation to achieve the goal may require different strategies. Scores of self-help and armchair psychology articles provide several solutions, yet we fail to keep our resolutions. These are some of the top reasons from the field of goal and motivation theory research, for why we fail to keep our resolutions.
The false hope syndrome
One of the reasons we fail to keep resolutions is that we set unrealistic expectations of ourselves [2]. A survey performed on obese women participating in a weight loss program found that their ‘goal weight’ was 32% of the current body weight, and even a weight loss of 16 kg (35 lb) was perceived to be not good enough [3]. People also tend to have an optimistic bias when evaluating the effort needed to achieve a certain goal. Moreover, the unrealistic expectation is not only unattainable, but also perceived as a gateway to more beneficial effects on other aspects of life. Therefore, mere weight loss is not enough, people often expect it to be coupled with improved ‘attractiveness’, career advancement and overall better quality of life.
Even though there may be a modest outcome observed after performing an activity, such as dropping a few pounds after following a diet plan for a few months, people are still dissatisfied because other aspects of their lives remain unchanged. This creates a cycle of setting resolutions, ‘failing’ to keep them, and setting the same resolution again, with the expectation that the next time would yield better results, which psychologists call the ‘false hope syndrome’ (Figure 2).
Self-concordant goals
A meta-analysis found that when goals are not intrinsically motivated (i.e. internal motivation), they are difficult to meet. In other words, when we set goals just because every other person on the planet sets the same for themselves (extrinsically derived motivation), then we are less likely to work towards achieving them. However, if our motivation to achieve a goal or perform an activity is to pursue the inherent enjoyment derived from it, then we may be more inclined to follow up on it [4]. In the same vein, setting too many goals, often in conflict with one another, can also hinder us from achieving them.
“Approach” goals vs. “avoidance” goals
Another aspect to consider is the wording of our resolution. A large-scale study on New year’s resolutions pertaining to many aspects of life, particularly physical fitness, found that people who set approach-oriented goals were more successful than those who set avoidance-oriented goals [5] Approach-oriented goals are those where the goal is to achieve a desired outcome, whereas avoidance-oriented goals are those where the goal is to avoid or quit undesired outcomes. For instance, ‘going to the gym 4 times a week’ is considered an approach goal, whereas ‘quit fast food altogether’ is considered an avoidance goal. Given the results of this study [5], it might be better to phrase one’s goals as wanting to achieve something positive, rather than avoid something negative. Indeed, even for primarily avoidance-oriented goals, such as quitting smoking, some of the suggested effective methods are to ‘get active’, ‘clean house’ and ‘eat fruits’ which can be considered as approach-oriented activities.
How can neuroscience of habit formation help us keep New year’s resolutions?
So, given that we have formed and hopefully worded our resolutions in the most positive way, what next? How can we ensure that this positive activity becomes second nature to us? How can we form healthy habits, and keep unhealthy ones at bay?
Some of our insight into how habits are formed, comes from research performed on animals using instrumental learning. Instrumental learning is the process by which an animal learns to perform an activity to achieve a desired outcome (for example, shake my hand to earn a dog treat, press a lever to earn a food pellet, etc.). Instrumental learning is thought to be governed by two systems – a goal-directed system and a habitual system. The goal-directed system functions in pursuit of an outcome and is dependent on its value, whereas the habitual system functions as a response to a stimulus, irrespective of the outcome. A goal-directed activity may be abandoned if the value of the reward or outcome is changed, whereas the habitual system doesn’t respond to it, as long as the initial stimulus to start the activity is present. This dual-process model makes it clear that a goal-directed activity requires cognitive effort and decision-making to perform, while a habitual activity doesn’t require decisions to be made [6,7]. For example, one might plan out a route to get to an unknown destination (goal-directed), but will find their way home easily almost as a force of habit (habitual).
In the same vein, a maze learning task is typically used to study whether lab mice use goal-directed or habitual strategies to solve it (Figure 3). For instance, in some situations, a mouse may be trained to make a first left turn and earn a reward. In a next iteration, the orientation of the maze could be changed and the mouse’s response would determine whether it learned the route to solve the maze (place/conceptual learning viz. goal-directed), or if it simply learned to make a first left turn no matter where it started from (habitual). In another iteration, the reward could be randomly removed after the first left turn, then the mouse would be tested to observe whether it continues to make the first left turn, once again enabling the researchers to infer about the strategy used. Importantly, by performing these experiments using mice with lesions in a part of the brain called the dorsolateral striatum (DLS), it was observed that stimulus-based responses were impaired, i.e. these mice had an impaired habitual system. On the other hand, mice with lesions in a related yet distinct part of the brain called the dorsomedial striatum (DMS) had impaired outcome-based responses, i.e. an impaired goal-directed system [6]. These areas interact with each other through various neurotransmitter systems, particularly through dopaminergic connections. These findings suggest that not only are the two strategies independently regulated and can be alternatively utilized based on context, but also that certain tasks can be flexibly converted from goal-directed activities into habits and vice-a-versa.
Figure 3: Maze learning task to differentiate between goal-directed and habitual strategies. Image generated using source and more details about experiments found in Handel and Smith, 2023. https://doi.org/10.1002/jeab.889
Some of the most important habit-making factors include strong, discriminatory stimuli, extensive training and interval schedules of reinforcement [6]. In other words, strong habits are created when behaviors are repeated several times in the same context, which can be rewarding on occasion, though the occurrence of this reward can be random. Thus, you are more likely to develop a habit of going running with a friend (strong social stimulus), or going for a walk while listening to your favorite podcast. On the other hand, the same principles apply to the formation and maintenance of unhealthy habits. Strong negative stimuli such as a bad day at work (stressful stimuli) can push one into habitual overconsumption of substances, or binge-watching one’s favorite shows on loop. Another drawback of being over-reliant on habits to make our goals stick, is that when day-to-day routines have to change on occasion due to social commitments or holidays, one can drop the healthy habit formed as part of a daily routine altogether! In such a scenario, it helps to go back to thinking about the big-picture, and once again re-evaluating larger goals and aspirations. Thus, we can make New year’s resolutions work, provided we are mindful of the strategies being employed to make them stick.
TLDR
If you are like me, perhaps you have already given up on your New year’s resolutions and are looking to the start of February to once again try to adhere to them. By wording your goals in a positive way, and by finding the true internal motivation to pursue your goal, by associating your desired activity with a strong rewarding cue, and by repeating the activity several times, hopefully, this round of trying to keep your resolutions will be as successful as it will be for me.
References
- Hengchen Dai, Katherine L. Milkman, Jason Riis (2014) The Fresh Start Effect: Temporal Landmarks Motivate Aspirational Behavior. Management Science 60(10):2563-2582. https://doi.org/10.1287/mnsc.2014.1901
- Polivy, J., & Herman, C. P. (2002). If at first you don’t succeed: False hopes of self-change. American Psychologist, 57(9), 677–689. https://doi.org/10.1037/0003-066X.57.9.677
- Foster,G.D.,Wadden,T.A.,Vogt,R.A.,& Brewer,G.(1997). What is a reasonable weight loss? Patients’ expectations and evaluations of obesity treatment outcomes. Journal of Consulting and Clinical Psychology,65,79–85. https://doi.org/10.1037//0022-006x.65.1.79
- Koestner, R., Lekes, N., Powers, T. A., & Chicoine, E. (2002). Attaining personal goals: Self-concordance plus implementation intentions equals success. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 83(1), 231–244. https://doi.org/10.1037/0022-3514.83.1.231
- Oscarsson M, Carlbring P, Andersson G, Rozental A (2020) A large-scale experiment on New Year’s resolutions: Approach-oriented goals are more successful than avoidance-oriented goals. PLoS ONE 15(12): e0234097. https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0234097
- Handel, S. N., & Smith, R. J. (2023). Making and breaking habits: Revisiting the definitions and behavioral factors that influence habits in animals. Journal of the Experimental Analysis of Behavior, 1–19. https://doi.org/10.1002/jeab.889
- Wood W, Rünger D. Psychology of Habit. Annu Rev Psychol. 2016;67: 289–314. https://doi:10.1146/annurev-psych-122414-033417
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