As the pelican dropped at midnight this New Year in Pensacola, Florida, there’s hope in us all that this year will be the best year yet for all of us. We hope that we’ll finally lose that stubborn fifteen pounds, or maybe that we’ll graduate college and get a great job as soon as we enter the workforce. Whatever your hopes may be, you may have also indulged in the classic tradition of making a New Year’s resolution. In a research study conducted by Norcross, Mrykalo, and Blagys (2002) in the Journal of Clinical Psychology, it’s been said that 40-50 percent of American adults make New Year’s resolutions, but do New Year’s resolutions actually work?
Nobody wants to waste their time on something that won’t work out for them, so it’s important to figure out if New Year’s resolutions actually work. Most of the stories you hear are about failure instead of the success of sticking with a New Year’s resolution. I talked with several students on campus, and I asked them if they believed that New Year’s resolutions could actually work. Not a single person I talked to said yes, and some students were mad about the concept of New Year’s resolutions and what they have become.
Multiple people told me that they thought New Year’s resolutions weren’t a good idea, because people should be continuously trying to change themselves and the arbitrary start of a new year shouldn’t be a signal to work on yourself. Just like Jenna Wheeler, a sophomore international relations major, said “I don’t personally make New Year’s resolutions because I don’t believe in setting one day to change something about yourself! You should constantly be changing and adjusting choices [you make] as you go throughout the year.” I also heard from people that while they don’t make New Year’s resolutions that they do try to achieve certain goals throughout the year as well: “I haven’t really tried [New Year’s resolutions] before. I [do] have a few resolutions I’m trying to follow every day though,” said Evangeline Murphy, a senior English major.
I was also told from one anonymous person that they didn’t participate in this tradition, because it’s become an excuse to mock people for not being able to change what they don’t like about themselves and for still being the same.
So with all of this in mind, I found the article by Norcross and colleagues mentioned above that answers whether New Year’s resolutions work or not. According to this study, only about half of people who make a New Year’s resolution actually are successful for six months. About 80 percent are successful for one week, and then the number severely drops at the one month benchmark.
Despite the discouraging statistics right there, in the same study it shows that less than 10 percent of people who don’t make a New Year’s resolution, but still want the same type of goals like losing weight or quitting tobacco, decide to actually achieve their goals for the same six-month period of time. So, while the chances of failure in the long run for all of you with a New Year’s resolution are still high, it’s better than not attempting to make a New Year’s resolution.
There’s also even more hope due to the fact that most studies on New Year’s resolutions, like Norcross and colleagues’ study, are older and maybe there has been an improvement in the statistics in the last fifteen years. While the scientific intrigue in New Year’s resolutions is fading away to other arenas of study, people are still making resolutions and we actually have ways for you to help stick to your goal as much as possible.
“I think New Year’s resolutions work if people are realistic when setting them,” Melissa Pisarski, a junior journalism major, says.
According to the study we’ve been analyzing, the way you approach your New Year’s resolution can decide how effective you are in sticking with your resolution just as Melissa said. Those that were unsuccessful focused on wishful thinking, minimized the problem they were trying to conquer via the resolution, and beat themselves up for letting the problem get to bad or relapsing.
So forgive yourself, face the reality of the situation, use positive thinking (because studies have shown that people respond to reinforcement more than punishment), and avoid stimuli that cause you to smoke or cause you to eat potato chips in the middle of the night. Throw all the junk food away!
To wrap things up, while New Year’s resolutions fail more often than not, by making that resolution you’re one step closer to your goal than if you hadn’t and who knows? Maybe this year will be different. Good luck collegiettes!  Â