Why changing behaviours feels hard

Harry Lewis and Julia Ravey were trying to change their behaviours by following a New Years Resolution, but they haven't been doing too well so far. In order to help them restart their attempts, Katy Milkman, a behavioural scientist from the Wharton School of the University of Pennsylvania, came in to explain why it's difficult to make a change, even when we know we want to do so, and gave a few methods to help them along the way...

Katy - Change is not just about making up your mind because there are all these internal barriers, not to mention the external ones. Do you have the financial resources? Do you have the health resources? All the things you might need? But even if you've got that all in line, our mind is working against us. The way we're designed, we tend to be present biased for instance. Which means that instead of focusing on long term rewards, we overvalue instant gratification, that makes change hard. We tend to reach for the path of least resistance, whatever is easiest, that's what we want to do. We often lack confidence in our ability to do something new and challenging and if we don't have confidence to make a change, then it's really hard. We have all these different barriers. That's just a subset of them that are working against us, that are part of our design or our operating system.

Julia - And so are there things we can do to make change a bit easier for us?

Katy - Yes, thank goodness. Science has lots of great evidence to offer on what we can do to make changes. I do think it's very important to say that the best tools for creating change in your life are going to depend on what the barriers are that are standing in your way. One of the most common barriers is we think that the best thing to do is find the most efficient path, but a small fraction of people make a different calculation. They actually think, 'what's the most fun way I can pursue change?' That sounds like a worse way to get there, it's going to take longer, but that's a better path. The reason is if we pursue change in ways that we find fun, we persist. One way that I have shown we can make change more fun and persist longer is through doing something I call 'temptation bundling', which is linking something that feels like a chore with a source of pleasure and temptation. For example, only binge watching your favourite TV show while you're on the treadmill. If you can find a source of pleasure that you can link with what would otherwise be a chore, it transforms the chore into something you might actually look forward to.

Julia - You did a big study about going to the gym and testing lots of different interventions - were there any interventions that stood out as being a class above the rest?

Katy - Yes. Lots of scientists in a tournament-like style submitted their best ideas for how to motivate people to go to the gym. Then we tested all these different month-long digital programs to motivate exercise against one another. We did it with about 63,000 Americans who were members of a popular gym chain. It was helpful to get people to make a plan; what are the dates and times when they were going to go to the gym? Then we'd send them text reminders to show up for the gym at that time, and we gave them points that were basically worthless. They were worth about 20 cents per gym visit. It wasn't a huge amount, but it gamified it and gave them a little micro-incentive. Then we layered on some additional ingredients and the most powerful of those additional ingredients, believe it or not, just focused on getting people not to miss two workouts in a row. Say you normally schedule yourself to go to the gym on Thursday and Friday one week, but we designed one version of the program where you'd get a tiny, extra sweetener to come back on Friday if you'd missed Thursday. It wasn't enough that you'd ever skip strategically, it was 10 cents, but it was enough to give you the sense that it's not a good idea to miss more than one workout in a row. That turned out to increase gym attendances by 30%. We found lots of other interesting things that increased exercise too, including giving people free audiobooks that they could link with their workouts. That was something that was successful. We also found that telling people, lots of other people are exercising - that gives you the sense that this is a social phenomenon you don't want to miss out on - and that increased exercise by about 25%. The good news is behavioural science is full of insights that can be used to improve our outcomes when it comes to behaviour change.

Julia - After hearing about the success of the interventions in Katy's study, I decided to set the Naked Scientists team, a little challenge: Over the next week, I want you all to take a walk from Cambridge to Liverpool (as a group). So Cambridge to Liverpool is 192 miles, and I did a little very accurate step calculator online, which comes together as 460,800 steps.

Harry - How many?

Julia - 460,800 steps. But based on the data I've had in so far from everyone, we're all walking less than what we need to walk per day.

Harry - I do about 300 steps a day.

Anoushka - Pick up the pace man.

Harry - I'm not joking.

Julia - Well for this you need to do 8,228 steps per day, for 7 days.

Harry - I've had to take my smart watch off because my mom keeps calling to ask how many steps I've done. I don't want to be berated anymore.

Julia - Well, it's a group effort, so you could do less steps and someone else can do more.

Harry - I like that.

Julia - You know what I mean? We can try and get to Liverpool but we might end up somewhere else on the M6.

Robert - What do we do when we get to Liverpool?

Julia - We're going have a party at my house.

Anoushka - We're going to the bingo place.

Julia - And to spice this challenge up, I decided to give each member of the team a different intervention to boost their step count. These interventions included.

James - If you hit your target each day, you'll get a treat of your choice at the end of the week,

Harry - James has been looking at a Tiffany ring recently.

Julia - A daily reminder.

Evelyna - Every day, receive a text message reminder to prompt walking.

Harry - Yours is so much worse than James'.

Julia - A reward during doing the step count.

Otis - Pick an audio book of choice and only listen to it while I'm walking.

Julia - A pre-commitment.

Robert - I have to sign a contract now to commit to walking the required number of steps. Somehow. Julia, I don't think that these are randomly assigned.

Julia - Planning ahead of time.

Anoushka - Add to schedule a reminder for when I should walk each day.

Harry - Lucky.

Anoushka - I am lucky. I like schedules.

Julia - A daily reflection exercise. 'Each day, look at your walking counter and think about what you can do tomorrow to improve.' And finally...

Harry - No intervention.

Julia - Harry seemed happy with that one.

Harry - The information received today is all the information you will get.

Julia - This time in a week's time from now, we'll meet again. We'll see if we've hit that target of getting to Liverpool as a group. Catch you in a week.