金錢獎勵能讓你堅持健身嗎 How to keep your gym habit

How are those resolutions going? Still going to the gym? If not, you’re not alone.

你的新年許願實施得怎麼樣？還去健身房嗎？如果不是，你並不孤單。

Let’s think about incentives. If some benevolent patron had paid you a modest sum — a few pounds a day, perhaps — for keeping your resolution throughout January, would that have helped you keep fit now that January is behind us?

讓我們想想激勵措施。如果有位好心的贊助者付給你一小筆錢——比如每天幾英鎊——讓你在整個1月份堅持你的新年決心，現在1月份已經過去了，那能幫助你堅持健身嗎？

The answer is far from clear. An optimistic view is that by paying you to look after yourself in January, your mysterious patron would have encouraged you to form good habits for the rest of the year. The most obvious case would be if you were trying to give up cigarettes; paying you to get through the worst of the withdrawal period might help a lot. Perhaps diet and exercise would be similarly habit-forming.

答案很不明朗。樂觀的看法是，通過金錢獎勵讓你在1月份照顧好自己，這位神祕的贊助者會鼓勵你形成良好的習慣，在今年餘下的時間堅持下去。最明顯的事例是，如果你嘗試戒菸，通過金錢獎勵幫助你度過戒菸過程中最糟糕的時期，可能大有幫助。或許飲食和運動也可以像這樣形成習慣。

Yet some psychologists would argue that the payment is worse than useless, because payments can chip away at our intrinsic motivation to exercise. Once we start paying people to go to the gym or to lose weight, the theory goes, their inbuilt desire to do such things will be corroded. When the payments stop, things will be worse than if they had never started.

然而，一些心理學家認爲，付錢是有害無益的，因爲金錢會蠶食我們鍛鍊的內在動機。按照這個理論，一旦我們開始付錢讓人們去健身房或者減肥，他們做這些事情的發自內心的慾望就會被腐蝕。當支付停止的時候，情況會比從未支付的時候還糟糕。

The idea that external rewards might crowd out intrinsic motivation is called overjustification. In a celebrated study in 1973 conducted by Mark Lepper, David Greene and Richard Nisbett, some pre-school children were promised sparkly certificates as a reward for drawing with special felt-tip pens. Others were given no such promise. When the special pens were reintroduced to the nursery classrooms a week or so later, without any reward on offer, the researchers found that the children who had previously been promised certificates for their earlier drawing now spent half as much time with the pens as their peers. Only suckers draw for free.

外部獎勵可能擠走內在動機的理念被稱爲過度合理化(overjustification)。1973年，馬克萊珀(Mark Lepper)、戴維格林(David Greene)和理查德尼斯比特(Richard Nisbett)做了一個著名的研究。在實驗中，一些學齡前兒童得到許諾，如果用一種特殊的水彩筆畫畫，他們就可以獲得閃閃發光的證書作爲獎勵。另外一些兒童則沒有得到這樣的許諾。一週左右之後，當這種特殊的水彩筆被重新引入幼兒園的時候，研究者發現，在不提供獎勵的情況下，之前畫畫時被許諾授予證書的兒童花在這些水彩筆上的時間比其他孩子少一半。傻子才免費畫畫呢。

There’s a big difference between exercising and colouring, however: while many children like felt-tips, many adults do not like exercising. A payment can hardly crowd out your intrinsic motivation if you don’t have any intrinsic motivation in the first place. Systematic reviews of the overjustification effect suggest that incentives do no harm for activities that people find unappealing anyway.

然而，鍛鍊和塗色存在一個巨大的差異：很多兒童都喜歡水彩筆，然而很多成年人都不喜歡鍛鍊。如果你本來就沒有任何內在動機，支付很難擠掉你的內在動機。對過度合理化效應的系統性評估似乎表明，獎勵不會損害人們本來就覺得沒有吸引力的活動。

So perhaps the idea of paying people to exercise is worth thinking about after all. In 2009, two behavioural economists, Gary Charness and Uri Gneezy, published the results of a pair of experiments in which they tried it. Some of their experimental subjects were paid $100 to go to the gym eight times in a month, while those in two alternative treatment groups were either paid $25 for going just once, or weren’t asked to go to the gym at all.

因此，付錢讓人們去鍛鍊的想法可能畢竟是值得思考的。2009年，兩位行爲心理學家——加里餠爾尼斯(Gary Charness)和烏里格尼茲(Uri Gneezy)——發表了嘗試付錢讓人們去鍛鍊的一對實驗的結果。研究人員付給一些實驗對象100美元，讓他們一個月去健身房8次，而對於兩個組的實驗對象，研究人員或者付給他們25美元，讓他們僅去一次健身房，或者根本不花錢請他們去健身房。

The results were a triumph for the habit-formation view. The payments worked even after they had stopped. In one study, the subjects were exercising twice as often seven weeks after the bonus payments stopped than before they started; in the other, the increase was threefold 13 weeks after payments had stopped. People who were already regular gym-goers didn’t change their behaviour — so there was no crowding-out — but there was a surge in exercise from people who hadn’t previously done much. A later study by Dan Acland and Matthew Levy found a similar habit-forming effect among students, although, alas, the good habits often failed to survive the winter vacation. In other experiments, incentive payments have been shown to be modestly successful at helping smokers to give up.

結果對習慣形成的觀點是一個勝利。即使支付停止以後效果仍在。在一項研究中，獎勵支付結束7周之後，實驗對象的運動頻度是開始接受獎勵前的兩倍；在另一項研究中，支付結束13周之後，試驗對象的運動頻度是開始接受獎勵前的3倍。那些本來就經常去健身房的人不會改變他們的行爲——所以不存在排擠效應——但那些原本不經常鍛鍊的人的鍛鍊次數大幅增加。丹阿克蘭(Dan Acland)和馬修利維(Matthew Levy)後來的一項研究發現，學生們也存在類似的習慣形成效應，不過遺憾的是，好習慣往往不能延續到寒假以後。在其他實驗中，獎勵支付在幫助吸菸者戒菸方面也較爲成功。

There is much to be said for a benign patron who pays you to stay healthy while you form good habits. But where might such a person be found? Take a look in the mirror — your patron might be you.

有一個好心贊助者付錢讓你保持健康，養成良好習慣，那當然很好。但哪裏能找到這樣一個人呢？看看鏡子吧——你的贊助者或許就是你自己。

Inspired by the ideas of Nobel laureate Thomas Schelling, economists have become fascinated by the idea of commitment strategies, where your virtuous self takes steps to outmanoeuvre your weaker self before temptation strikes. A simple commitment strategy is to hand 500 to a trusted friend, with instructions that they are only to return the cash if you keep your resolution.

受到諾貝爾獎得主托馬斯∠鞌(Thomas Schelling)的啓發，經濟學家迷上了承諾戰略的理念——在誘惑變得不可抵擋之前，你品行高尚的那部分自我會採取行動，戰勝你較弱的那部分自我。一個簡單的承諾策略是把500英鎊託付給一位值得信賴的朋友，囑託他們只有在你堅持你的新年決心時才把錢還給你。

Might a commitment strategy allow you to pay yourself to go to the gym? It might indeed. Economists Heather Bower, Mark Stehr and Justin Sydnor recently published the results of a long-term experiment conducted with 1,000 employees of a Fortune 500 company. In this experiment, some employees were initially paid $10 for each visit to the company gym over a month. Some of them were then offered the opportunity to put money into a commitment savings account: if they kept exercising, the money would be returned; otherwise it would go to charity. The approach was no panacea: most people did not take up the option, and not everyone who did managed to stick to their goals. But even three years later, those who had been offered commitment accounts were 20 per cent more likely to be exercising than the control group.

承諾戰略是否會讓你付錢給自己去健身房？可能確實會。經濟學家希瑟貟爾(Heather Bower)、馬克施特爾(Mark Stehr)和賈斯廷纏德諾(Justin Sydnor)最近發表了以某一家《財富》500強公司的1000名員工爲對象的長期實驗的結果。實驗最初，一些僱員在一個月期間每去公司健身房一次就可以獲得10美元。然後，研究人員向其中一些人提供機會，將錢放入一個承諾儲蓄賬戶：如果他們堅持鍛鍊，這筆錢將被返還，否則就會捐給慈善機構。這項策略並不是萬靈藥：大多數人並沒有選擇這個選項，也並不是每個人都能堅持他們的目標。但即使是3年後，那些獲得承諾賬戶的人鍛鍊的機率仍比對照組高20%。

That chimes with my experience. I once wrote a column about sending $1,000 to a company called Stickk, which promised to give it away if I didn’t exercise regularly. The contract was for a mere three months — and I succeeded. Eight years after my money was returned, I’m still sticking to the habit.

這與我的個人經驗相吻合。我曾經寫過一篇專欄文章，講述了我給一個叫Stickk的公司1000美元的經歷。該公司承諾，如果我不經常鍛鍊，就會把錢捐贈出去。這份合約僅持續3個月——我成功了。我的錢返還給我8年後的今天，我依然堅持着這個習慣。