CLEMSON, S.C. — As the year comes to an end, many people are crafting their goals and resolutions for the new year. However, some may be wondering why people choose the new year to begin a patterned behavior or best practices for continuing their resolution for longer than a day or week.
Explore the science behind New Year’s resolutions with Clemson University marketing expert Danny Weathers as he explains the history behind this phenomenon. Additionally, Weathers goes in-depth into the relationship between streaks and habits and how these concepts play a part in many New Year’s resolutions.
Weathers is a professor and interim department chair in the Department of Marketing at Clemson University and an expert in consumer behavior and decision-making, including consumer price and number judgments, online information processing, patterned behavior, and customer/patient satisfaction. Weather’s latest research focuses on streaks and what motivates people to keep a streak.
This is a transcript of the video above:
"I'm Danny Weathers, a professor and interim department chair in the Department of Marketing.
"So, in terms of the history of resolutions, from what I've been able to uncover, people have been creating New Year's resolutions or some form of that for probably 4,000 or more years. Now, the structure of those resolutions has changed over time, and the focus of those resolutions has certainly changed over time.
"But this is not a new phenomenon. But one of the things that I found in my research was that a large percentage of people, particularly in the context of running, use January 1st as a date to start their streak. I did a survey of people who have daily streaks of running at least one mile, and it was over 40% of the people in the survey who began their streaks on January 1st.
"People feel pressure to keep up their streaks there. It's a bigger goal, and people like to achieve goals. So we have, you know, the daily behavior is a short-term goal. Maintaining the streak is a longer-term goal. People are motivated for that reason. But not all people are equally motivated by streaks. Some people need more structure than other people, and so people who have a high need for structure are motivated to maintain their streaks because the streak does provide structure to the daily lives.
"It’s interesting when you think about the relationship between streaks and habits.
"It's a very complicated relationship. A streak is a way to perform a behavior. And in many cases, people begin streaks with the idea of that behavior becoming a habit. So, for example, if you feel like you want or if you want to be in better health, you may start a running streak or an exercise streak, or if it's related to mental health, perhaps a meditation streak.
"But the idea for many people is that a streak will then become a habit, and it's something that they would do without much thought to maintain their health.
"Perhaps a good example is to think about putting on a seatbelt when you get in a car. That's something that most people hopefully do habitually. You don't think about it. You get in your car and buckle your seatbelt; you don't keep track of how long or how many days you've buckled your seatbelt. Compare that to a behavior like running a mile a day, and a number of people have running streaks or Duolingo streaks or Wordle streaks.
"Typically, when you start a streak, you have to define what the behavior is. So, for example, running at least one mile, you put this parameter on that behavior, and you have to do it at least once every calendar day. Now, everyone can define a streak how they see fit. Not everyone defines a running streak in that same way, but in one way or another, you need to have parameters for the behavior.
"My definition of a streak focused on really four aspects. First of all, it's an activity that's completed by the resolve of the actor. So, it's not something that just happens to you that would be more of a lucky streak.
"But the types of streaks that marketers are trying to take advantage of are more intentional efforts by the people using their app or their website. So that's one component of a streak. Streaks also, they must be perceived by the person as a streak.
"Streaks are also quantified. So again, unlike a habit in which you don't typically quantify how often you have a habitual behavior, you do quantify how often you engage in a streak behavior.
"So runners, Snapchat users, they can tell you how long their streak is or when it began. And so, there are some important components of streaks that differentiate them from other types of pattern behavior.
"I think most of the growth in streaks is in the online world because, again, the technology allows you to easily track and monitor behavior.
"Marketers can send notifications if your streak is about to end. So there's just this growth in technology that we've seen, and the ability to track people's behavior has led to a growth in streaks in the online world."