I don’t know about you, but I’m feeling pretty optimistic that we’ve reached the beginning of the end of this horrific pandemic. I know we have a long way to go, but we’ve come a long way too. And it doesn’t hurt my optimism that spring is in the air in Philadelphia. The dogwood tree out back is blooming, the birds are chirping, and everyone in my family who is over 65 has been fully vaccinated. I almost feel like I can see the finish line…
While nearing the finish line might just bring hope in terms of the COVID-19 pandemic, it can have a much greater behavioral effect when we’re closing in on a personal goal. And that effect is the focus of today’s newsletter.
But before I go there, here are a few listens and reads I recommend this month:
Recommended Listens and Reads
The Psychological Magic of Do-it-Yourself: We’re back with a new season of Choiceology! And for our first episode of 2021, I interviewed Harvard Business School Professor Mike Norton about his research showing how and why putting something together makes you value it more, whether it’s an origami miniature or an IKEA bookshelf.
Freakonomics Previews My New Book: I gave my friends at Freakonomics a sneak peek at my new book, How to Change. Their latest episode offers a fabulous preview of Chapter 1, packed with insights from research on how and why moments that feel like fresh starts produce behavior change (for better and for worse). If you like the episode, be sure to pre-order the book!
How to Write a Gratitude Letter: Read some truly wonderful advice from the New York Times about a simple and costless way science has proven you can bring yourself and someone else joy.
Q&A: So Close To the Finish Line
Today I’m sharing an interview I conducted for Choiceology with University of Chicago Booth School of Business Professor Oleg Urminsky. Oleg is an expert on goals and motivation. In this Q&A, we talk about his research on the goal gradient hypothesis, or why being close to the finish line matters.
Me: First, can you explain what the goal gradient hypothesis is?
Oleg: The basic idea is that the closer we get to completing a goal, the more motivated we are to continue working on it and achieve that goal.
Me: Will you tell me about your now classic paper confirming the goal gradient hypothesis?
Oleg: We thought loyalty programs would be a good laboratory for studying this. Think “buy 10, get one free” coffee programs, or airline frequent flyer miles. If you think about the coffee program: You're thirsty, you want to get something to drink, you could either go to the coffee shop downstairs where you have a loyalty card or you could go somewhere else. How you choose between those things might be affected by whether you’re trying to complete that coffee card.
Our main study was in a “buy 10, get one free” coffee card program on campus. We managed this program, collected the cards, and measured how long it took people to come back for their next coffee as a function of how many stamps they already had on their card. When you have only one stamp on your card, nine to go, are you going to be less motivated, and therefore it'll take you longer to come back and buy another coffee, than if you already have eight stamps and only two left to go? That's exactly what we found.
Me: Why do you think people behave this way?
Oleg: The way cognition is organized prioritizes larger rewards and rewards that we're closer to achieving. We're present biased, and that's actually part of what's going on. When you only have one stamp on your card, that's pretty far away. Whereas, when you only have two stamps to go, that coffee is imminent. You could get it really soon. And so, it seems more valuable.
Me: What is the progress illusion and how does it relate to the goal gradient?
Oleg: There's a lot of research showing that humans try to form judgements and use heuristics to simplify complex decisions. What that suggests is that maybe it's not the actual distance to the goal that matters in human behavior, but our perception of that distance. And so, the progress illusion is theoretically interesting as a way to test if motivation is about real goal proximity or subjective perception.
The basic idea is to hold constant the objective distance to the goal, but make some people feel like the goal is pretty close and others feel like the goal is farther away. And so, we designed two different kinds of these coffee cards. One was a 12-stamp card, but we started people off with two free stamps. The other version was a standard card, just “buy 10 coffees, get one free.”
In both cases when people get the card, they're 10 coffees away from receiving their reward. But in the first case, by framing it as 12 stamps and giving them two free stamps, they feel like they're already part of the way there.
People completed cards faster if they thought of it as the remaining 10 out of 12 as opposed to the full 10 required. You can see this in lots of different real-world settings. Plenty of rewards programs will give you free points to start.
Me: Does this affect the way we pursue goals more generally when we aren’t buying coffee?
Oleg: Absolutely. One of my colleagues, Devin Pope, has a great study looking at standardized testing. He looks at a setting where there's different tests on different days and the students know in advance which subject will be administered first, second, third, or fourth.
He finds that students consistently score higher on the first test. The idea is that the week before they're sitting there thinking about these four goals that they're trying to achieve, which is to do well on four different tests covering four different topics, and they focus their efforts on the one that's the closest. They think of the first topic, “Let me study really hard for that one.” And they maybe over-prioritize that first one.
This implies that understanding the goal gradient is important for managing our own motivation because it can be a double-edged sword. On the one hand, having a salient goal that we're committed to with a clear deadline or requirement is really motivating. It focuses our attention, gets us to muster our energy and really work on achieving that goal. It's a great source of motivation and we can use that by setting up our goals in a way that we always have a goal in our sights that feels close.
The potential dark side of the goal gradient is that when we're really focused on the proximal goal, it can make us shortsighted, just like the students. And so, the flip side of understanding the goal gradient is realizing that it can be really helpful to motivate us to have this upcoming goal in our sights, but we want to make sure it's not blinding us to other, later goals that are equally or maybe even more important.
To learn more about Oleg and his research on the goal gradient hypothesis, listen to this episode of Choiceology.
This interview has been edited for clarity and length.
That’s all for this month’s newsletter. See you in April!
Katy Milkman, PhD
Professor at Wharton, host of Choiceology, an original podcast from Charles Schwab, and author of How to Change: The Science of Getting from Where You Are to Where You Want to Be