A new year’s resolution is something that goes in one year and out the other. Get it? While there’s no shortage of jokes about people failing on their resolutions by January 2, in the world of training it’s no joke that people often fail to act on what they’ve learned in a course. In fact, transfer of learning has been the bane of the industry for decades. However, recent findings in habit formation and neuroscience may offer some help with this quandary.
It’s a strategy called “self-affirmation,” and involves having people focus on their best qualities. For example, ask people if they’ve ever done something considerate for a stranger, or helped a colleague in need. Then have them expand by describing what they did. It might be most helpful if they write a brief story about the experience. This helps a person focus on their best qualities, which seems to prompt them to commit and follow-through on what they’re learning. The exercise doesn’t even have to be related to the training content. For example, if the training program is designed to enhance personal agility and innovation, people’s self-affirmations do not need to be related to these topics. The idea is to have people focus on what they like about themselves, irrespective of what they’re learning. It’s a simple and quick addition to any training program that may pay dividends.
A study by Tracy Epton and Peter Harris looked at the effects of self-affirmation on intentions to eat more fruit and vegetables. They randomly assigned subjects to a self-affirmation or control task prior to reading a message about the health effects of fruit and vegetables. One week later they found that the people who gave themselves self-affirmations ate significantly more portions of fruit and vegetables compared to the control group – an increase of about 5.5 portions over the week. A study about the psychology of addictive behaviors by C.J. Harris and several others found that people who engaged in self-affirmation were more likely to quit smoking than those who didn’t. These two studies concluded that self-affirmation helps people accept messages more openly, feel committed to change, and most importantly, change their behavior.
So how does this operate within the brain? Many habits are controlled, in part, by a structure in the “primitive” part of the brain called the basal ganglia. To change ingrained habits, they need to be overridden by information that comes from the prefrontal cortex, the more logical part of the brain. Much like the natural high that people get from physical exercise, thinking about our best qualities seems to release serotonin, the brain’s natural mood-enhancing drug that also helps the prefrontal cortex to operate at its peak performance. Self-affirmation boosts the ability of the prefrontal cortex to alter the basal ganglia.
Remember, self-affirmation is not just about positive thinking. It’s also focusing on one’s best qualities in a meaningful way. This seems to be the mechanism that helps people make commitments. So next time you’re running a program that involves meaningful behavior change, include this 10-minute exercise and follow-up with your participants. You never know, it may change their attitudes and behaviors.
