"What's your 'skittle'?" by Monica Howard, M.A., BCBA

New Year’s Resolutions:  What’s your “skittle?”

According to a recent study done at the University of Scranton, 45% of Americans usually make New Year’s resolutions and the top resolution for 2012 was to lose weight.  What this means for anyone with a gym membership is that fitness centers are very busy in January.  Group exercise classes are packed, yoga studios...

squeeze people in like sardines, and you need to wait to get on a treadmill.  Reportedly, only 8% of people are successful in achieving their resolution, so within 6 weeks or so, this trend typically tapers out and things go back to as they were “pre-new year.”  If you’re in the 92% of unsuccessful resolvers, you have likely thought about why resolutions don’t stick and considered ways to break this trend.  If you’re in the 8% of successful resolvers, I’m about to expose your secret.  The successfulness of the 8% is simple and familiar; they have established an effective reinforcement contingency. 

Operationally defined, reinforcement is the presentation or removal of a stimulus following an event that increases the likelihood of that event occurring again under similar conditions.  When teaching our kids, positive reinforcement is what is most often used to teach new skills.  The form of reinforcement varies across individuals (e.g., skittles, tokens, praise), but the fact is that without reinforcement, new skills will not be maintained.  So when you decided to start exercising four days a week as your new year’s resolution, what was your identified reinforcer?  In that first week, it may have been praise from a friend or even satisfaction of following through on your commitment.   Two weeks later, it may have been losing some weight.  But as the novelty of exercising wears off and the direct benefits (e.g., weight loss) come slower, motivation may decrease…all of a sudden, it’s February or March and you’ve joined the 92%.

For the luckiest ones among us, exercising develops its own reinforcing qualities and additional reinforcers become ancillary.  But for the majority of us, external reinforcers are necessary to maintain this behavior and should be acknowledged. 

So what do we do about it?  Well, the same thing we do with teaching our kids new skills. 

1)    Defining the Target.  What behavior do you want to reinforce?  Is it a specific goal or a general goal? 

2)    Reinforcer Sampling.  What do you like?  What would motivate you to exercise?

3)    Potency. Isolate your reinforcers so that they are contingent on exercising.  Remember, the more you have of something, the less value it has as a reinforcer.  So coffee may not be the best reinforcer for going to the gym, if you have it all the time. 

4)    Immediacy.  Deliver your reinforcer immediately after you exercise.  So this is related to #2; if your identified reinforcer is to “lose 30 pounds,” you’re going to struggle because it is not immediately available.  Choose something that you can initially receive following each workout.

5)    Adherence to contingencies.  If you skip the gym one day, that’s ok, but follow-through on your reinforcement schedule – no access that day!

6)    Token System.  A token system can serve as a reinforcing stimulus, as well as a prompt, if displayed in a common area.  Print off a simple calendar, tack on a wall in your kitchen, and mark down every time you exercise.

7)    Schedules of Reinforcement.  Start off with a fixed schedule of reinforcement and pair a token with a reinforcer to increase the value of your tokens.  As you become more fluent in your skill, fade out the immediacy of your primary reinforcer (e.g., coffee) with tokens only.  Then, begin to shift your schedule of reinforcement from daily to weekly.  Increase the value of your reinforcer by setting a larger goal (for example, 10 days of going to the gym = new workout shirt; 30 days of exercise = new sneakers).

Motivation for change can be very difficult to sustain across a long period of time, especially when the behavior involved has more long-term benefits than immediate benefits.  Incorporating a token system is a feasible and effective way of supporting your goal for change.  But first you need to figure out what your “skittle” is, set up your reinforcement contingencies, and follow-through on reinforcing yourself  Join the 8%.  

References: http://www.statisticbrain.com/new-years-resolution-statistics/


Monica R. Howard, M.A., BCBA
Doctoral candidate in Applied Behavior Analysis at the Munroe-Meyer Institute in Omaha, NE.