Weather is to lose weight, to adhere to a healthy diet or even to take their medications every day. It often seems like most of my patients make little progress in controlling their diabetes or high blood pressure. Thinking I was doing a good job by reviewing the complications of diabetes and high blood pressure, IT MIGHT HAVE BEEN DOING THE OPPOSITE. We are told to educate patients regarding complications which often results in scaring patients. We are told that by scaring patients, will lead patients to make the right decisions. But the sad reality is that it doesn’t work. Why was I not able to motivate patients into making better decisions based on what could happened in the future? Why is it so hard to motivate patients?
If you try to stop yourself from snacking, we will tell our self you will be fat. If some one is smoking you will tell them, you will die of cancer. We have a deep-rooted belief that by scaring ourselves or others we will do the right thing. Except that science shows that warnings have limited impact on behavior. Graphic images on cigarette packets, do not deter people from smoking. (Ruite & Kok, 2005; Taubman Ben-Ari, Florian & mikulincer, 1999’ Trenholm et al, 2007; Ennett et al, 10994)
Warning and treats work but have a very limited impact in motivating people into action.
When animals get scared, they have two reactions, freezing or fleeing. Human beings are animals and have the same responses to fear or being scared. When something is scary, we try to eliminate what is scaring us using rationalization. We could tell ourselves, I had my blood sugars high for a while now and nothing has happened. The process makes you feel stronger than before and makes it harder to do the right thing.
Many of us will act like the Ostridge and place our head on the ground. We ignore what is front of us, people avoid negative information because it makes us feel bad. People will start facing reality when is too late, when we have bad outcomes or complications that can not be ignored. People will avoid worrying about something that might or might not happen in the future now, they choose to worry about it when it does happen.
Studies show that people prefer to go along with the better or positive outcome. People listen to the positive information. Ability to learn from positive information remains the same throughout life, where learning from bad news is less in the young and elder but better with those right before midlife.
How can we use this information to motivate ourselves and others?
Using positive information uses three principles that drive peoples’ decision and behavior. The first is:
*Social incentives (response to opinion of others that lead to change, Edelson, Sharot, Dolan & Dudai, 2011=science). We are social people, we want to know what others are doing and we want to do it better.
*Immediate reward Values rewards you can get now more than rewards you can get in the future. Choose something tangible now rather than something is insure in the future. Can you reward people now for actions that are good for them in the future? Actions become associated with the rewards, leading to the desire outcomes.
*Progress monitoring highlight progress not the decline.
Do we need to stop communicating risks? No but we might want to re-think how to approach motivating ourselves and others. Because fear of loosing your health will lead to inaction or freezing. While positive information will lead to action.
