Now that you've set your difficult, specific, and attainable resolutions for 2014, should you tell people about your plans?

Before you update your Facebook status proclaiming your intention to lose 15 pounds, run a marathon, or publish 20 papers, you should think about your reasons for broadcasting your plans to the world. If you're thinking about this public commitment the wrong way, you might be setting yourself up for disaster.


Illinois MarathonThis happens because sharing your intentions with others can create a sense of progress towards a goal, even if you haven't actually done anything yet. As a good example, imagine that you've decided to run a marathon. Once you start telling all of your friends and family about this goal, "liking" the relevant pages on Facebook, and updating your statuses to indicate your training plans, you've created a public image of yourself as "someone who runs marathons." Creating this so-called "social reality" for yourself can be thought of as a subgoal that you've completed en route to your superordinate (or broader/larger) goal of...actually racing. If you conceptualize this public commitment as a form of goal progress, you might actually become less motivated to pursue other goals (like actually training), because it will feel somewhat like you've already "done enough" for now.

However, despite the strength of this research, this seems to clash with some people's actual experiences. The comment sections on articles about this work are rife with people who don't really believe these findings, as their personal experiences indicate that their motivation for certain goals greatly increased after sharing their intentions with others. While anecdotes are certainly not data, it does seem a little simplistic to assume that every instance of sharing your goals with others will be detrimental, doesn't it? Even though the findings themselves have been thoroughly tested and have generally held strong over time?

This is where research from other domains might be helpful.


Again, resistance to persuasion and successful goal pursuit are not the same thing. But this literature can still give us a big clue about the reason why publicly stating your goals can sometimes work, and it can sometimes backfire: It's the idea of Commitment Versus Progress.

Most of the literature showing a negative effect of publicly stating your intentions on subsequent goal pursuit revolves around the idea that publicly tying yourself to these goals signifies some sort of progress. For many people, this is how they construe this public commitment; letting your friends and family know that you intend to run a marathon signifies that you've made some sort of significant progress towards actually accomplishing this goal, which means you can ramp down your efforts. However, you could also think of your public statement as an indication of goal commitment, rather than goal progress.



So before you update your status or tweet out about your 2014 resolutions, think about whether you're conceptualizing it as an act of progress or an act of commitment. And if you've already Tweeted to the world about your registration for that marathon in May, don't fret! Just make sure that you think about your status as having committed you to that goal -- and don't make the mistake of thinking that a Facebook status update will make up for a month of missed training when that marathon rolls around.









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