HOW TO HANG IN

AT THE start of each year, people set ambitious goals but give up on them before they are halfway through carrying them out.

In a paper titled Social Information Avoidance: When, Why, and How It Is Costly in Goal Pursuit, published in the Journal of Marketing Research, Stanford Graduate School of Business associate professor of marketing Szu-chi Huang found that some people avoided information about others pursuing the same goal, particularly in the middle stages of an endeavour, out of fear that they would “look

bad” by comparison.

She said that intermediate period was precisely when people needed comparative data the most. Indeed,

when people took note of that information during the middle stage,

their motivation rose.

“Each year, we ambitiously set goals to improve certain nagging aspects of our lives,” said Huang. “However, as our motivation wanes, inevitably many of us fail. Research shows that when people track the progress of their peers via channels like social media... their competitive drive kicks in and they are more likely to overcome slumps and increase their chances of success. But, when they get too competitive and try to sabotage others, they could end up losing motivation

themselves.”

Researchers have long known that people’s motivation to achieve

specific goals declines when they are approximately halfway towards achieving them, raising the risk of their abandoning the entire effort. That’s because at that

point, people lack a motivating “anchor”. The excitement of getting started has faded, while the finish

line is nowhere in sight. “Social information helps us when we are stuck in the middle,” said Huang. “If we don’t leverage it when we need it the most, we risk losing motivation completely.” |