That Neuroscience Guy - The Neuroscience of New Years Resolutions

Episode Date: January 8, 2023

It's prevalent for people to start a new year with some resolutions: commitments to improving certain behaviours. Whether it's working out, reading more, or maybe spending less time on screens, failing to keep up with those resolutions is almost as common as making them. In today's episode of That Neuroscience Guy, we discuss the neuroscience behind why we want to improve our behaviour, and why we often fail.  

Hi, my name is Olof Kregolsen, and I'm a neuroscientist at the University of Victoria. And in my spare time, I'm that neuroscience guy. Welcome to the podcast. Well, I've done it again. It's a new year, 2023, and I've made some New Year's resolutions. Like a lot of people, I've decided I want to eat healthier, and I want to exercise more, and maybe have a beer or two less. Why do we make New Year's resolutions?

It seems like every year we torture ourselves with this. We come down and we put our foot down and say, this year, you know, this year, this is a year of change, and this year I'm going to do these things differently. Well, there's two principal reasons from a neuroscience perspective, why we make new year's resolutions. One is societal pressure, especially in Western culture. We've built an entire thing around this. We have peer pressure, which influences us to a great deal. Now we've talked about this before on the podcast, but we are social creatures. Our amygdala responds when we're near other people. And as I've said before, we all went through this during COVID.

You know, when we were locked away from other people, we could feel the stress and the impact of this. So peer pressure is a real thing. When people lean on us, we feel that we need to respond because we have this deep-seated urge or drive, if you will, to make people happy. And this is hardwired into us. You know, humans weren't, humans didn't evolve to function alone. We evolved to function in a group and thus this societal pressure to make new year's resolutions. We hear other people doing it. Well, what are your resolutions? Why don't you have resolutions? There is a pressure to do this. So that's one reason why we do this, but you have to realize that's within our brain as well.

you have to realize that's within our brain as well. And second, and perhaps more importantly, this is human nature. We do have a drive to improve ourselves. And this can be linked to a couple of things. At the lowest level, it's linked to the fight or flight response, which is hardwired into us. Within the midbrain, we literally at some level still process things in terms of fight or flight. That's why when we see something scary, we have this instinctive response to run away or in some cases to engage. And we have an instinctive desire to survive. In fact, a lot of our reproductive desires are based on this. They're almost beyond our control. This hardwired desire to improve ourselves. Because if you improve yourself, you have a desire to survive.

It's going to help you survive. Now, the biggest problem with New Year's resolutions is motivation. So the biggest problem with New Year's resolutions is motivation. You know, to be able to succeed at your New Year's resolutions and have them work, you have to have the right kind of motivation. Now, we principally talk about two key types of motivation, internal versus external motivation, or some people would call this intrinsic versus extrinsic motivation.

So how does this work? Well, internal motivations stem from within us. All right. These are the things that drive us forward to succeed. Now, how are they developed? They're developed through our reward pathways. If we think back to this, I've talked about dopamine and its role and reward. But if we do things and we find them good, we enjoy them, we're more likely to do them. So imagine you start exercising and you just enjoy exercising. You like going for a run or you like going for a walk or hitting the gym or whatever it is for you. Well, that causes a release of dopamine. And as we've talked about before, that dopamine is rewarding, but it also strengthens the neural pathways that make you want to do that behavior again. All right. That's why when we enjoy something, we want to repeat it because dopamine has strengthened those pathways. So our intrinsic or internal motivations are tied

to this reward system. We've learned about the things that we like, and we've learned about the things that we don't like. Now, external motivation or extrinsic motivation is actually kind of the same thing. This is when we're motivated by something else. So if you go for a run, you know, um, you get to eat a cupcake, uh, something like this, or, you know, I remember when I was trying to get my son to play basketball, I used to bribe him with lifesavers and stuff. Every time we shot hoops for 30 minutes, these are extrinsic motivations. Now these also trigger a release of dopamine, but at the end of the day, this response is lower than the one that's generated internally. So when we do something

that we find rewarding ourselves and it's inherently or intrinsically rewarding, you get a larger release of dopamine than if you do something that's externally motivated. And because that dopamine release is lower, we're less likely to repeat that behavior. And in fact, there's a huge body of literature on this. If you look at kids playing sports, kids that are pressured into playing sports at a young age, they tend to quit playing sports as they get older because it's all external or extrinsic

motivation. They're being pushed by their parents and their parents are trying to motivate them. Whereas kids that like playing sports and fall in love with the game, if you will, well, they're intrinsically motivated and they're more likely to keep doing them. So when we come up with our new year's resolutions, it's really important that we think about why we're making them. Is it something that's internal that you truly want for yourself or is it external? You know, losing weight's a great example of this. Some people are intrinsically or internally motivated to lose weight because it's rewarding for them. It's going to trigger that release of dopamine in the midbrain. But other people lose weight because of societal pressure. You know,

they're doing it for other people. They're doing it because they want to look better or fit a stereotype or something like this. And people that are externally motivated are less likely to continue with these sort of new behaviors, these resolutions, because the strength of the neural pathways is weaker. So when you make your resolutions, you really got to focus on this internal versus external issue. All right, do I really want to do this for me or am I doing it for someone else? So the generation of resolutions and our ability to stick to them is also tied to our sense of self. And this goes back to internal motivation. But in research, we call this the ownership bias.

Now, research has shown that when things are relevant to self, we weight them way more strongly. You know, a classic ownership study is you give someone or show someone a list of items or a set of items, and you say, these are items that belong to you or items that you might acquire. And then you show them a different set of items, and you say, these are items that belong to someone else or items that someone else might acquire. And if you just test memory, you find that people have way better memory when it's relevant to self. Now, this is true of everything. In my own lab, we've shown this in terms of reward processing and decision making. So again, with New Year's resolutions, if these are things that are extremely relevant to

yourself, this ownership effect or this self-bias which generated within your brain is going to help you stick to things. So when it comes to making New Year's resolutions, the neuroscience and psychology behind this is pretty clear. So like I've said a couple of times, make sure that you're doing it for an internal or intrinsic motivation. This is the most important thing. If you are intrinsically motivated to do something, you are far more

likely to stick with it than if you're extrinsically motivated to do something. You're doing it for people. And really think about this one. When you make that desire to exercise more, is it because you really want to exercise or you like exercising or the benefits of exercise are important to you or are you doing it for someone else? Now, the second step for this to help, and this is what our brain needs, is you need a step-by-step plan. So you need to think to yourself, you can't just start exercising, all right? I can tell you this from personal experience, and as a former phys ed teacher a long time ago, you need to come up with a plan on how you're going to exercise more or on how you're going to eat healthier or on how you're going to save more money. You need to literally lay this out.

And the reason for this is your brain does way better chasing short-term goals than long-term goals. If you're constantly making the prefrontal cortex engaged, remember that's your analytical decision-making system, it's going to be really, really hard to just go after that long-term goal without thinking through the sub-goals, if you will. And third, and this is just, again, helping your brain out a little bit, come up with backup plans. So, for example, let's say the gym is closed and you are going to work out, have an exercise you can do outside or at home. Again, this is just reinforcing the behaviors. This is basic sort of common human behavior theory. But if you have this step-by-step plan and you anticipate where it might go wrong, what you can do about it, it means you're more likely to succeed. And as we know from Hebbian

learning, things that we do frequently, we're more likely to keep doing. So there's a little bit on the neuroscience of New Year's resolutions. Hopefully you found that a little bit interesting. The big take-home message is, in terms of sticking with anything, internal or intrinsic motivation. Make sure things are rewarding for yourself, because if they are, there's going to be a greater release of dopamine, which means you're more likely to do them again. All right. Remember, you can follow us on Twitter at that NeuroSci guy. Well, that's following me.

Please send in ideas. The rest of the season is actually mapped out. The next eight episodes are all coming from ideas from you so dm me and we'll take in your ideas because we're we're coming back for season five we just can't stop now it's too much fun remember the website that neuroscience guy.com you can buy some of our merch from our etsy store or you can support us on patreon for those of you that are supporting us on Patreon, thank you so much. A dollar a week or a dollar a month really helps out and all the money goes to graduate students in the Kregolson Lab. None of it goes to me personally. And of course, thank you so much for listening to the podcast. Please subscribe. It helps a ton. My name is Olaf Kregolson, and I'm that neuroscience guy. Thank you so much for listening, and I'll see you on Wednesday for another neuroscience

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