Putting Your Past Behind You: Why and How Fresh Starts Motivate Goal Pursuit--and When They Backfire

People often fail to exercise the self-control required to tackle their goals and improve their performance. However, many feel that we have opportunities throughout our lives to start fresh with a clean slate (e.g., around New Year\u27s Day, after a Catholic confession). Although the notion of fresh starts has long been endorsed by our culture, researchers have not systematically explored the implications of fresh starts for people\u27s motivation to exert effort in goal-directed activities. Across three chapters, I examine (a) how and why fresh starts affect individuals\u27 ability to exert the self-control needed to achieve their aspirations and (b) when fresh starts may adversely influence individuals\u27 motivation to improve their performance. In Chapter 1, three archival field studies demonstrate that people engage in aspirational behaviors (e.g., exercising, creating a goal commitment contract) more frequently at the start of new time periods that are initiated by temporal landmarks (e.g., the beginning of a new week/month/year/school semester, or immediately following a holiday, a school break, or a birthday). In Chapter 2, five laboratory studies show that meaningful temporal landmarks--dates imbued with meaning due to their identity-relevance or rarity--are more likely to spur goal pursuit than (a) ordinary days or (b) objectively identical but psychologically less meaningful landmarks. Further, I provide evidence for one mechanism underlying these findings: temporal landmarks (particularly meaningful landmarks) relegate past imperfections to a previous period, making the current self feel more capable of pursuing aspirations. Chapter 3 investigates the impact on individuals\u27 future performance of tracking their performance without incorporating records of their past performance (a phenomenon I refer to as a performance reset). I propose that when individuals believe their past performance was poor, a performance reset will improve their performance by boosting self-efficacy and commitment. However, I expect resets to hurt performance by decreasing commitment without increasing self-efficacy when individuals believe their past performance was strong. One archival field study and four laboratory experiments support this hypothesized relationship between performance resets, past performance, and future performance; these studies also provide preliminary evidence that self-efficacy mediates this relationship. Chapter 4 discusses directions for future research

The Motivating Effects of Temporal Landmarks: Evidence from the Field and Lab

People often set and strive for goals in their pursuit of a better self. For example, individuals may commit to health goals, such as eating less junk food or quitting smoking; others may set relationship goals, such as being more compassionate and attentive; and criminals may declare their intention to abstain from illegal behaviors. Despite their best intentions, however, individuals often find themselves committing undesirable actions in violation of their goals. Dieters may fail to resist temptation and eat a donut; spouses may fail to control their emotions and lash out at loved ones after a stressful work day; and formerly incarcerated individuals may fall prey to their old, unlawful habits. Failed attempts at following through on their good intentions may lead individuals to believe they are not capable of making positive changes. This resignation may foster a “what the hell” rationalization – the tendency to engage further in undesirable behaviors following a first step in the unwanted direction – and lock individuals with past failures in an undesired, negative cycle. What could free individuals from this cycle? Are there naturally arising points in time when people tend to feel untarnished by their past imperfections and become more determined than usual to tackle their goals? This article reviews recent work in the field of judgment and decision-making that examines (a) what types of external events can generate feelings of a fresh start, (b) how these events affect individuals’ goal motivation, and (c) how insights about these external events can be capitalized to design “nudge” techniques that steer people towards future-oriented decisions. Specifically, this article will first introduce the concept of “temporal landmarks” and discuss why temporal landmarks may feel like fresh starts and inspire the pursuit of self-improvement goals. Next, it will review studies that examine the relationship between temporal landmarks and goal motivation, including one that presents a field application of leveraging temporal landmarks to promote future-oriented decisions. It will conclude with a discussion about the potential implications of this stream of research for policymakers interested in designing nudge interventions

Put Your Imperfections Behind You: Temporal Landmarks Spur Goal Initiation When They Signal New Beginnings

People often fail to muster the motivation needed to initiate goal pursuit. Across five laboratory experiments, we explored occasions when people naturally experience enhanced motivation to take actions that facilitate goal pursuit and why certain dates are more likely to spur goal initiation than others. We present causal evidence that emphasizing a temporal landmark denoting the beginning of a new time period increases people’s intentions to initiate goal pursuit. In addition, we propose and show that people’s strengthened motivation to begin pursuing their aspirations following such temporal landmarks originates in part from the psychological disassociation these landmarks induce from a person’s past, imperfect self

Motivating Process Compliance Through Individual Electronic Monitoring: An Empirical Examination of Hand Hygiene in Healthcare

The design and use of standard processes are foundational recommendations in many operations practices. Yet, given the demonstrated performance benefits of standardized processes, it is surprising that they are often not followed consistently. One way to ensure greater compliance is by electronically monitoring the activities of individuals, although such aggressive monitoring poses the risk of inducing backlash. In the setting of hand hygiene in healthcare, a context where compliance with standard processes is frequently less than 50% and where this lack of compliance can result in negative consequences, we investigated the effectiveness of electronic monitoring. We did so using a unique, radio frequency identification (RFID)-based system deployed in 71 hospital units. We found that electronically monitoring individual compliance resulted in a large, positive increase in compliance. We also found that there was substantial variability in the effect across units and that units with higher levels of preactivation compliance experienced increased benefits from monitoring relative to units with lower levels of prepreactivation compliance. By observing compliance rates over three and a half years, we investigated the persistent effects of individual monitoring and found that compliance rates initially increased before they gradually declined. Additionally, in multiple units, individual monitoring was discontinued, allowing for an investigation of the impact of removing the intervention on compliance. Surprisingly, we found that, after removal, compliance rates declined to below prepreactivation levels. Our findings suggest that, although individual electronic monitoring can dramatically improve process compliance, it requires sustained managerial commitment

Save More Later? The Effect of the Option to Choose Delayed Savings Rate Increases on Retirement Wealth

Prior research in economics and psychology has documented that individuals exhibit time-inconsistent preferences when faced with the opportunity to take an action that involves immediate costs in return for future benefits – the notion of implementing such an action now is unappealing, but the notion of implementing the same action later is attractive. Because increasing contributions to a retirement savings plan requires a reduction in current consumption (an immediate cost) in order to increase consumption in old age (a future benefit), individuals may be more likely to agree to a contribution rate increase if they have the option to have the increase implemented at a delay. We conducted a field experiment with several universities to test whether the option to choose a delayed contribution rate increase boosts savings. Relative to employees who are offered a convenient mechanism for increasing their contribution rates immediately, employees who are offered a convenient mechanism for increasing their contribution rates immediately or at a delay are no more likely to agree to an increase. In fact, the latter group exhibits lower savings rates over the coming months, as the delayed option attracts some employees. However, when the delayed option is framed as being implemented after a psychologically meaningful moment, such as an employee’s next birthday, the negative effect of offering a delayed option is undone

The Impact of Time at Work and Time off From Work on Rule Compliance: The Case of Hand Hygiene in Healthcare

To deliver high-quality, reliable, and consistent services safely, organizations develop professional standards. Despite the communication and reinforcement of these standards, they are often not followed consistently. Although previous research suggests that high job demands are associated with declines in compliance over lengthy intervals, we hypothesized—drawing on theoretical arguments focused on fatigue and depletion—that the impact of job demands on routine compliance with professional standards might accumulate much more quickly. To test this hypothesis, we studied a problem that represents one of the most significant compliance challenges in health care today: hand hygiene. Using longitudinal field observations of over 4,157 caregivers working in 35 different hospitals and experiencing more than 13.7 million hand hygiene opportunities, we found that hand hygiene compliance rates dropped by a regression-estimated 8.7 percentage points on average from the beginning to the end of a typical 12-hr work shift. This decline in compliance was magnified by increased work intensity. Further, longer breaks between work shifts increased subsequent compliance rates, and such benefits were greater for individuals when they had ended their preceding shift with a lower compliance rate. In addition, (a) the decline in compliance over the course of a work shift and (b) the improvement in compliance following a longer break increased as individuals accumulated more total work hours the preceding week. The implications of these findings for patient safety and job design are discussed