The Psychology Of Sticking To Those New Year's Resolutions
Rebekah Boynton, Anne Swinbourne
New Year’s resolutions are about trying to break habits, which is hard, but not impossible to do.
That’s because habitual behaviour is automatic, easy and rewarding. To change a habit, you need to disrupt your behaviour to make way for a new, more desirable one. But as the number of broken New Year’s resolutions indicates, disrupting old habits and forming new healthy ones can be difficult.
But what if you’re motivated to change old habits? Unfortunately, it isn't that simple.
Behaviourism is a theoretical perspective in psychology that tries to understand human and animal behaviour by studying observable behaviour and events. According to behaviourism, habits are initially motivated by the outcomes or consequences of behaviour, like eating food or earning money. Habits are triggered by contextual cues, like the time of day, your location, or objects around you.
This contrasts with other ways of looking at how we form habits that focus on internal and subjective experiences, like moods, thoughts and feelings. Behaviourism is more concerned with what we can objectively observe.
Behaviorists disrupt habitual behaviour patterns and develop plans to form new habits by what’s known as the ABCs of behaviour change:
– Understanding the antecedents or triggers that precede behaviour.
– Clearly defining the behaviour you want to change.
– Manipulating the consequences or outcomes that follow behaviour.
First, it’s important to clearly define the behaviour you want to change. If you don't, what constitutes the “behaviour” becomes open to interpretation and creates loopholes you’ll try to wriggle through when there are more attractive options on offer.
State the behaviour and quantify your goal. For instance, “I would like to walk five kilometres three times a week” is clearly defined but “I would like to exercise more” is not.
Certain contexts or environmental cues often trigger habitual behaviour. These are what behaviorists refer to as antecedents and are a large part of why we perform habitual behaviours.
When are you more likely to crave an ice-cold beer? Is it Friday afternoon at the pub? Or Sunday morning on the way to church?
Because we have previously enjoyed drinking at the pub at the end of the working week, when we visit again, we are more likely to have a beer or two. This rarely happens in a church where, while there may be some wine, you’re not going to get a lot of it. The pub environment sets the scene for drinking behaviour. The church does not.
To form a new habit, you need to maximise the triggers and cues that lead to the desired behaviour and avoid triggers to the less desirable behaviour.
For instance, if you want to drink more water and notice you drink more water when you have a bottle handy, you can take a full water bottle to work each day. Use the bottle as a visual trigger.
The consequences of a behaviour to a large extent determine whether or not you are likely to repeat the behaviour. Quite simply, if a pleasant outcome follows a new behaviour, you’re more likely to repeat it.
This leads us to reinforcement, an important concept in behaviourism that refers to the process of encouraging the performance of a behaviour. Reinforcement can be used to help you establish a new habit.
Positive reinforcement is most likely a term many are familiar with and probably already use. Simply, positive reinforcement involves behaviour being followed by a reward. Food and money are obvious reinforcers but not really appropriate if your resolution is to maintain a diet or save money. What sort of things do you desire but rarely.