Hidden Brain - Episode 17: Resolutions

Episode Date: January 19, 2016

Today is the perfect day to (re)start your resolution. Here's how.

This is Hidden Brain, I'm Shankar Vedanta. We're a couple of weeks into the new year, and perhaps you've already fallen behind on your resolutions to floss every day, eat healthy, exercise. Today, we're going to help you get back on track. We'll talk about the psychology of resolutions, and Dan Pink will join me to offer tips to help you stick to your goals.

Before we get to that though, I wanted to take a few minutes to talk about something happening on my own staff. It's 2016 and I have not smoked for two minutes. This is Max Nestrak. He's been working at Hidden Brain for the last couple of months. His resolution was to quit smoking. I decided I wanted to help. I told Max to do three things based on findings from social science research. We'll come back to one of them later in this episode and we'll have another episode in a few months to discuss how and whether the interventions worked.

Max has been recording an audio diary since the day he quit. Today is day one. I've noticed that time goes really slow when you're quitting smoking. Day one of quitting smoking continues. It's like this mental obsession. So you're kind of like, oh, should I have a granola bar? No, I want a house cigarette. Should I go for a walk?

No, I want to have a cigarette. I'm really looking forward to going to bed. And it's like 2 p.m. You're on a trolley and you're really warm and you're wearing your winter coat and scarf. And when you're having a craving, you just, you don't think that you're ever going to feel differently or have felt differently.

It's super crowded and it's super hot in this trolley and that sort of feels like you have to love the burn almost. You know what I mean? Like it sucks, it hurts and you just kind of lean into it and you're like yeah, like this is what quitting feels like and yeah so I'm loving the burn right now. Oh, okay, it's like three minutes away from being 48 hours, so it's at the end of day two. It's day three, and I still haven't smelled. There were some dark moments today. Uh-huh. Okay, it's day five, and I just got back from a run day eight, which means I've made it an entire week, which feels like such an accomplishment.

So it's day 12 and when I woke up this morning, I was just feeling so grateful that, you know, the first thing I don't have to go have a cigarette. Hidden Brain's new assistant, Max Nestrak. We're going to begin today by exploring why we make resolutions in the first place. That's important in understanding why we so often fail to stick to them and how we can do better. If you listen to public radio, you know that I often sit down with a host of the daily news programs to talk about interesting social science research. My recent conversation with Audi Cornish of all things considered started with a host of the daily news programs to talk about interesting social science research. My recent conversation with Audie Cornish of all things considered started with a question.

Why do we make New Year's resolutions? Especially if we know we're just going to break them. Here with some insight on this subject as NPR's social science correspondent Shankar Vait Dantam and Shankar, you also are going to offer some advice, right, on how to make these goals more achievable. I'm going to try Audie. Okay, let's get this out of the way. First of all, why do we bother with New Year's resolutions? What's going on in our head? It's actually a great question, and I don't think we actually stop to ask that question very often. A few social science researchers recently did, Hank Chen, Dai, Catherine, Milkman, and Jason Rees at the Wharton School at the University of Pennsylvania, they asked this question, why do we make resolutions at the start of a new year?

And they think new year's resolutions are really a form of what they call mental accounting. They find that Google searches for the word diet go up dramatically at the start of a new year. But what's interesting is that it's not just at the start of the new year. Birthdays, the start of a new month, the start of a new week, federal holidays, all of these serve as what the researchers call temporal landmarks. Temporal landmarks, okay, so it's our own way of marking sort of who we are, who we were, and the beautiful butterfly.

We can do a merge, right, when we make all these changes. Exactly, now, you know, many religions actually have explicit language describing the very same thing. So Christians, for example, say someone is born again. And this squares very well with the psychological truth about human beings, Adi, previous research by Ann Wilson and Michael Ross at the University of Waterloo, show that people tend to look down on their path selves compared to who they are now. So they say, I used to be a chump, but now I'm a chump.

So resolutions really are a way to mark this transition between the old inferior version of ourselves and the new and improved Audi Cornish 2.0. Aha, well what does this tell us about why the resolutions fail then, right? We have the energy, we have the gumption. What happens? Well, I mean if we are biased to imagine that our present cells are superior to our past cells. This actually sets us up for failure, Adi. So if I think to myself that the new and improved chunker will exercise every day and exercise self-control, but I'm really the same person that I used to be, my resolutions are likely to fail. You're basically saying this is what makes it hard to follow through. Who we want to be versus who we kind of know we are. That's exactly right. And when

you come to sort of addressing these problems, I think the first thing to say is that awareness of the bias is actually helpful. But we can also take advantage of our tendency to see these temporal landmarks as fresh start. So for example, one thing you can do is make changes that then work automatically. So if you boost automatic deductions

from your paycheck to a retirement account, for example, you can make that change once on January 2nd, and it's going to last the rest of your year without you having to do anything about it. The second thing you can do is take advantage of smaller temporal landmarks, like a new month or a birthday, you can take advantage of that bias to basically say when you hit February 1st, you can now say the January version of myself is the inferior version, I have a chance now to reinvent myself in February. All right, so you know a lot about this.

Does this mean that you have a seemingly achievable resolution for 2016 that you're willing to share? Well, I have a resolution. I'm not sure how achievable it is, Audi. And I feel this resolution very keenly right now, because like millions of other people, my sports team has done abysmally this past season. And my resolution for 2016 is to care less about football than I did in 2015. Some would say that version of you is the superior version. And it's probably not achievable.

Okay, so in the couple of weeks since I talked to Audi, I have already failed in my resolution because I have continued to follow my failing football team with the obsession that I had in 2015. So we're going to take a short break and when we come back, Dan Pink is going to help me and we are going to help you figure out ways to stick to your resolutions. Stay with us. Back now for another round of stop-what science, I'm Shankar Vedantam. I'm joined as always by Daniel Pink. He's the author of several books on human behavior, but on our show, his title is Senior Stop-Wat Science Carrespondent. Hi, Dan.

Hey, Shankar. On stop-what science Science Carous Pondit. Hi Dan. Hey Shankar. On Stop-Wat Science, Dan and I give one another 60 seconds to summarize interesting social science research, as we approach the 60 second mark, our producers Kara and Maggie will bring the music up to drown us out just like they do with the Oscars. Our topic today is how to stick to your resolutions. I have to ask you, Dan, are you good at sticking to your resolutions? I am resolute in general, but not that good at resolutions in particular. I have a lot of resolve. Let's put it that way. Wait, so you mean that you are a resolute person who doesn't stick to your resolutions? I'm theoretically as resolute as a human being can be.

As we know, theory is the only thing that actually matters on stopwatch science. Alright, Dan and I are going to help you stick to your failing or flagging New Year's resolutions. Have you found your studies, Dan? I have, and this first one earned its place on stopwatch science, Shankar, because it's the only academic paper I've ever read that cites both William James and LeBron James. Alright, can I wait to hear this? Down if you're ready, your first 60 seconds starts now.

Now this first study was led by Ethan Cross of the University of Michigan and shows that we can boost our performance by choosing the right pronoun. Now this research examined self-talk. That's what it's called when we talk to ourselves silently. Across several experiments, the researchers tested if changing the way we talked to ourselves could help us in nerve-wracking situations like giving a speech. Now, for this experiment, half the participants used first-person pronouns in their self-talk, saying things like, why do I feel this way? The other participants used non-first-person language,

saying to themselves, why do you feel this way, or if I were a participant, what are the underlying causes and reasons for dance feelings? and language. Saying to themselves, why do you feel this way, or if I were a participant, what are the underlying causes and reasons for dance feelings? Over and over, non-first-person self-talk proved more effective in reducing anxiety and helping people see stressful situations as challenges rather than threats. Unlike the words I and me, second-person pronouns, and even talking about yourself in the third person like LeBron sometimes does gives us the distance to see situations more objectively and to prepare with greater confidence. I love that study, Dan. It's in some ways you know it meshes with all the work that's been done on

mindfulness that basically says when you can observe yourself you actually have some distance and control over your perceptions and behavior. That's precisely what it is. It's something called self-distancing. And actually the little tricks we can use in our own lives to self-distance is something as simple as switching from first person to second person or even third person. So now Shankar, I'm going to give you a second person instruction. You have 60 seconds to give us your study. All right, let me start by saying that even though Shankar Vedanta is experiencing great anxiety about wrapping up this summary in 60 seconds, he is going to do his best to come

in on time. All right, Lizzy Pope, Andrew Hanks, David Justin Bryan-Wonson, get Cornell University recently analyzed why New York's resolutions fail when it comes to healthy eating? They find that people buy more unhealthy food during the holidays in the window between Thanksgiving and Christmas. It's not surprising, we're celebrating, we're having lots of parties. After that, there's good news and there's bad news. On the positive side, after New York's day,

people buy significantly more healthy food. That makes sense. They've made resolutions to eat healthy. They're buying more carrots and celery. The bad news is, after New York's day, people continued to buy roughly the same volume of unhealthy food that they were buying in the Thanksgiving to Christmas window. In other words, healthy food was not replacing unhealthy food. It was merely being added to unhealthy food. So if you find that your New Year weight loss plan is not working, check your grocery bills to see if you're still buying soda chips and candy. Fascinating. So basically what it means is people are just buying more food overall. Exactly. So to me the ultimate take away from this is invest in grocery store chains. Oh, yeah. They're revenues are going up.

But beyond that is there's something that we can do in our own lives to adjust for this. I think the thing to do actually is to be aware that it's not just enough to adopt healthy behaviors when you're making a lifestyle change. It's just as important to leave unhealthy behaviors behind. All right, Dan, I'm hoping that you will leave your unhealthy behavior of exceeding your 60 seconds behind you in this next segment with starts right now.

When we make New Year's resolutions, we often focus on what to do and how to do it. But a fascinating study of West Point graduates shows that the secret to success might be why we do something in the first place. A group of scholars led by Yale's Amy Riznuski and Swarthmore's Barry Schwartz studied nine years worth of cadets at the U.S. military academy. Some of these cadets enter the academy with what the researchers called internal motives. For example, they might have come to West Point mostly because they wanted to serve their country. Others had largely instrumental motives.

They wanted free tuition or a resume boost. And many of course had a mix of those two motives. So who ended up as the most successful officers? Turns out that the people with strongly internal motives did very well. But did adding instrumental motives on top of those intrinsic drives improve performance even more? Nope, it actually made it worse. Anytime instrumental motives were in the picture, performance actually declined. Sometimes we look at high achievers and assume they pursued success, but that confuses motives with consequences. The people who achieve the most on New Year's or any other day it seems are those who do

things for the right reason. That is really interesting Dan. I'm wondering if this is happening partly because when people face setbacks it's the people who have intrinsic motivations who are better able to overcome those setbacks, it's the people who have intrinsic motivations who are better able to overcome those setbacks because they sort of see them as temporary. If I go to West Point because I want something on my resume and then I find that West Point is really, really hard, I start to think it's really worth all this trouble to get this on my resume. I think that's actually a very, very good point.

We'll be interesting to see a test similar to this in a less demanding institution than West Point because that's, as we know from other kinds of research, it's really, really tough to get through. So you really have to want it for deep down reasons. So speaking of deep down reasons, your 60 seconds starts right now. All right. Economists have long been interested in what they call pre-commitment strategies. That's basically the idea that if you want to stick to doing something, you commit yourself to facing unpleasant consequences if you fail. Dean Carlin is an economist at Yale.

He's done lots of work looking at pre-commitment devices to help people reach their goals. In one study he conducted some years ago, Dan, smokers trying to quit, put money into a savings account. If they successfully stayed off cigarettes, they got their money back. But if they started smoking again, the bank took the money and donated it to a charitable cause. Carlin found that smokers were slightly more likely to stick to their resolution if they made this kind of commitment. He's actually taken this idea and run with it. He's helped found a group called Stick, STICKK.

This is an online site that helps you make this kind of pre-commitment. One interesting twist is that you can actually have your money donated to an organization that you detest. So if you're a Republican trying to quit smoking, you can stash the money away and say that if you return to smoking, all the money is going to go to Hillary Clinton's presidential campaign. If you're a Democrat trying to quit, you can say the money is going to go to Donald Trump. Fascinating. So we could possibly even use this on this show.

So maybe you could commit to, if you go over your time, you just give money to me. I think I'm gonna be willing to do that, Dan, only if you promise that going forward, you will always speak about yourself in the third person. So Dan Pink would love that kind of arrangement. He really would. All right, there you have it.

Talk about your resolutions in the third person. Cut out all the unhealthy food you've been buying since Thanksgiving. Focus on your internal motives and goals and make a pre-commitment to donate money to a cause you detest because it can help you save your life. Dan Pink, thank you for joining me on Stopwatch Science. Dan Pink really enjoyed it. We spend lots of time on Hidden Brain telling you what researchers have found. Today, we're going to go the extra step of actually trying to apply what they have learned.

Max Nestrak joined our team right after Thanksgiving. After a couple of weeks, we noticed he would get up regularly and leave the building. He was going outside to smoke. Max didn't bring up his smoking habit during his job interview. To be clear, NPR does not discriminate against smokers, but Max felt it would not reflect well on him to reveal that he smoked a pack a day. When we were brainstorming this episode, Max talked about how hard it was to quit. He stride it many times.

He said he wanted to try quitting again on January 1st. We decided to help. I gave Max three assignments based on findings from social science research. We'll follow what happens over a few months and tell you how Max ferred with his assignments and whether they helped him stick to his resolution. The first assignment was something he had to do before he quit. In late December, I asked Max to record a public service announcement on why young people should never start smoking. Here's Max.

When I was 18, my dad's aunt, my great aunt Doh, died of a heart attack. She was 74 years old. The paramedics found her at her kitchen table and her home in Char Nohio, some over in front of her morning coffee, her aftrite, and her inhaler. For as long as I knew Aunt Doo, she was a smoker. She smoked door lights, those kinds that only old ladies seemed to smoke. But I used to sneak them out of her purse when I started smoking at 14. My parents and aunts and uncles used to tell us kids when we were little to ask Ando to

quit. They thought kids might be more persuasive than they were. I remember one time, after nudging, Ando,e shouldn't smoke, she replied, I know honey, but when I think about quitting I get stressed, and when I get stressed I smoke more. Having smoked more than 10 years myself I know how she felt. But smoking clearly caught her life short. It's a fact that, well, I'm a shame to admit, hasn't discouraged my own smoking. The thing is, death is too abstract. Lung cancer too far off, and the risk of heart attacks too uncertain. I'm sure I ain't don't know, like I do, the risks that smoking kills the little sillia

that clean the air for your lungs, that it cuts off the blood flow to your gums causing your teeth throbbing from the inside, that it causes plaque to build up in your arteries, leading to stroke and heart attack. A doctor once told me on his smoke break that I just needed a quip before I was 35 and my body could still recover. I'm not sure he's right, I can already hear my laugh sometimes turning into a cough like Anthos did,

but by his measure, I probably have another 10 good years of smoking in front of me. I'm only 25. But if you're 14 and thinking about having your first cigarette, I'm quitting now, and here's why. Smoking really sucks. Not just when you're 60 or 70 or 80 if you're lucky. It sucks when you're 16, when you're 20, when you're 25. Today I can't run as fast or as far as a non-smoker. I spend more money on cigarettes than I'd like to think about. But the worst of it are the cravings that come like clockwork, even when I'm sleeping. If you don't smoke, here's what you should know.

When your smoker, life is lived around cigarettes. You'll be laughing with friends at dinner or totally engrossed in a good book and something will tug at you. And as much as you want to stay in this moment, you'll be thinking about a cigarette. So you'll get up, walk outside, and light up. And it will feel really good, but you'll wish you were back inside and you'll be so tired

of training off these moments for a smoke. If you don't smoke, you should know that smoking makes a prison out of perfectly normal situations. Long flights, concerts, class, anything that lasts longer than a couple of hours. These are your enemies as a smoker. And anytime you go on a date, or to a job interview, or to your grandparents' house, it will be accompanied by a pang of worry. You'll wash your hands and pull your shirt to your nose and I hope they can't smell smoke. Finally, if you don't smoke, you should know how hard it is to quit,

how much you'll want to and fail to give it up. I'm going to quit on January 1st and to be honest, I'm sad about losing something that's been part of my life for so long. And in the coming weeks without a cigarette, I know the cravings will find a way to twist my reasons for quitting into reasons why I can't still smoke. This is the most baffling part of smoking, the way it hijacks your best intentions. I've heard that quitting is the hardest thing a smoker ever does, but also that whatever pain is needed out in the coming weeks will be totally worth it. Because to be an on-smoker means being free to go anywhere and do anything unencumbered. It means being able to be fully present in each moment if I choose.

And so the next time I get on a long flight or go out to dinner with friends or see a movie, I won't be plotting my next cigarette. Have you ever quit something successfully, smoking, biting your nails, gambling, a bad relationship? Max wants your advice and we want your stories. Leave your quitting success stories at 661-772-7246. If you want to leave Max a message of advice or encouragement, you can do that as well. Once again, the number is 661-77-brained.

The Hidden Brain podcast is produced by Karam Agar Kalasin and Maggie Penman, our news assistant is Max Nestrak. For more Hidden Brain, find us on Facebook, Twitter and Instagram and on your local public radio station. Check out our newsletter to see what I'm reading this week. Send an email to hiddenbrainatnpr.org with the word subscribe in the subject line. I'm Shankar Vidatham and this is NPR.