How do you give your best chances of success on your New Year's Resolution? Science has the answer! Here's an overview of goal-setting theory and how to make it work for you.

Further Reading:

Höchli, B., Brügger, A., & Messner, C. (2020). Making New Year's resolutions that stick: Exploring how superordinate and subordinate goals motivate goal pursuit. Applied Psychology: Health and Well‐Being, 12(1), 30-52. https://doi.org/10.1111/aphw.12172

Locke, E. A., & Latham, G. P. (2002). Building a practically useful theory of goal setting and task motivation: A 35-year odyssey. American Psychologist, 57(9), 705–717. https://doi.org/10.1037/0003-066X.57....

Locke, E. A., & Latham, G. P. (2006). New directions in goal-setting theory. Current directions in psychological science, 15(5), 265-268. https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1467-8721.2...

Munson, S. A., & Consolvo, S. (2012, May). Exploring goal-setting, rewards, self-monitoring, and sharing to motivate physical activity. In 2012 6th international conference on pervasive computing technologies for healthcare (pervasivehealth) and workshops (pp. 25-32). IEEE. 10.4108/icst.pervasivehealth.2012.248691

Oscarsson, M., Carlbring, P., Andersson, G., & Rozental, A. (2020). A large-scale experiment on New Year’s resolutions: Approach-oriented goals are more successful than avoidance-oriented goals. PLoS One, 15(12), e0234097. https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone....


Photo credit: Anthony Quintano / Wikimedia Commons