People generally believe that fear is more effective than profit induction and can quickly prompt people to take action to make changes. This may sound like a reasonable explanation, but scientific research HE Tuber shows that warnings have very limited impact on behavior.

Just like a large number of diabetic patients who are advised by doctors to diet, abstain from alcohol and exercise more, they still cannot help but overeat, drink alcohol and are too lazy to exercise.

Is it a mistake for people to fail to change their behavior? Is it self-inflicted? In fact, it is human nature. Everything is always difficult at the beginning, in the middle, and at the end. Abraham Lincoln also said the following:

How to change? Professor Uri Gneezy proposed in "Mixed Signals" that when people are very motivated to change, behavioral scientists usually try to introduce external incentives as the first step to break the impasse.

Just imagine, when you plan to exercise for 1 hour every day, it may be painful the first time you go to the gym, only exercise for 10 minutes, and come home sweaty and exhausted. When I woke up the next day, I was sore all over and had no fat loss at all. But if you stick to it, you can accumulate exercise practice and experience.

Working out is more enjoyable (or at least less painful) when your fitness results are clear. For example, when you lose a few pounds and your leg muscles are vaguely visible, this will make you feel better in your daily life, healthier, and better able to balance life and work.

Exercise is indeed anti-human, and researchers have also conducted incentive experiments to test their conjecture: whether providing incentives for college students to join campus gyms can encourage them to develop long-term exercise habits.

First, commit $25 to all students to go to the gym at least once during the week. Then, after the students completed the tasks and received their rewards, they were randomly divided into two groups:

Incentive group: If you go to the gym at least 8 times in the next four weeks, you will get an extra $100;

Control group: verbally encouraged to continue going to the gym, but no reward provided.

As expected, the researchers found a significant increase in gym visits in the incentive group that continued into week five (for the $100 effort).

Then the researchers stopped the incentives, and interestingly: Over the next few months, the incentive group was on average twice as likely to go to the gym. The increase in gym attendance was entirely driven by changes in people who did not go to the gym frequently before.

Experiments show that it is indeed possible to promote the formation of good habits by providing incentive compensation for a sufficient number of events.

How do we apply this principle in reality? Commit to giving yourself a little extra reward after each workout (after changing it up). Or, just as Nintendo released the game "Ring Fit Adventure" to great acclaim, by combining game rewards with exercise rewards, our rejection of fitness and the initial difficulty will be reduced a lot.

Although initial external motivation can help us develop short-term habits and get you started taking action. But in terms of long-term effects, it may not be ideal.

Just like the student fitness motivation experiment mentioned above, after extending the observation time to half a year, it was found that after a winter vacation, the exercise frequency of the students in the motivation group returned to a low level.

In order to enhance motivation and maintain habits, if possible, we can also add other psychological strategies, such as commitment mechanisms and social networks, which use social signals and self-signals to increase the cost of "giving up".

Given the issue of self-control, how do we ensure that people follow through on an incentive program? One way is to use the commitment mechanism: lock yourself into a plan that would otherwise be difficult to achieve through willpower alone.

One of the oldest examples comes from Greek mythology: sirens were dangerous creatures of the sea that lured nearby sailors with their enchanting songs. Legend has it that King Odysseus of Ithaca came up with a strategy to avert disaster: He tied himself to the mast of his ship to prevent him from being confused and jumping overboard after hearing the siren's song.

The researchers also conducted incentive experiments to verify the commitment mechanism: correcting the self-control problem of bodybuilders.

Incentive group: Subjects will receive a $10 reward for visiting the company gym three times a week. After the incentive period ends, half of the people are required to pay a deposit and promise to go to the company's gym in the next two months and not exercise for more than 14 days in a row, otherwise the deposit will be donated to charity.

Control group: no incentives.

Is the commitment mechanism effective? The answer is yes. It helps form habits and enhances their long-term effects. Two months after the initial incentive ended, the experimental group that received the commitment contract maintained half of the increase in physical activity caused by the incentive.

In business, we also often see such strategies, such as "Punch in for xx days and you can purchase for 0 yuan", "Punch in to learn vocabulary for free"...

This strategy takes advantage of loss aversion . In addition, participants experienced the power of self-signals : breaking commitments to achieve goals sends negative self-signals that indicate weakness of will and undermines self-image. On the contrary, keeping a promise sends a positive signal and shows that you are determined, thereby improving your self-image and prompting you to persist in action.

In addition to this, meeting more people who are motivated to do it will also increase your motivation.

Imagine two scenarios, both taking place on a lazy Sunday afternoon: In the first scenario, even though you promised yourself to go to the gym today, your couch feels extra comfy. Another scenario is that you're also relaxing on the couch, but suddenly you get a text from a friend saying she's on her way to the gym. You remember you and her talking about working out together. Under what circumstances are you more likely to get up from the couch?

Researchers have also conducted related motivation experiments and found that if people who are motivated to exercise have more friends who are also motivated to exercise, then the number of times they go to the gym will increase. Conversely, the more unmotivated control group friends the experimental group students had, the less often they went to the gym. People's exercise behavior seems to be heavily influenced by their friends.

Also in business, such strategies are not uncommon: WeChat Reading’s design of team reading to earn points/draw experience cards is a good combination of WeChat’s strong social advantages; the “collaboration culture” that became popular this summer also uses social partnering The plan will be carried forward - travel companionship, meal companionship, study companionship, photo-taking companionship...

This commitment to not letting your friends down exemplifies the power of social signaling. If you cancel plans with friends at the last minute, you send a signal to your friends that you are unreliable, which can hurt your social image. On the other hand, consistently keeping your promises and sticking to your plans can improve your social profile and thus inspire continued action.