We have better ways to break habits than willpower. Why don't we use them?

Zlatev coauthored the research with Ariella Kristal, a postdoctoral scholar at Columbia Business School and former HBS doctoral student.

Why people count on willpower

Zlatev says commitment strategies can be extremely effective, such as partnering with a friend to remain accountable about reaching a goal, whether it’s eating healthier, exercising more, or drinking less. Also effective: building in repercussions for failing to achieve a goal, such as committing to donating to a charity—perhaps even a cause the person disagrees with.

“The idea is that to be self-controlled, you have to put aside activities you’d rather be doing, which can be difficult in the moment, so you set up this system to help you,” says Zlatev.

The alternative is relying on willpower to force your way through a situation, whether it’s finishing a report on deadline rather than scrolling Instagram or getting to the gym instead of lounging on the couch. Since willpower requires significant effort, Zlatev and Kristal surmised that perhaps people see those who use it as superior to those who rely on external aids.

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In testing this hypothesis, the researchers found:

People trust others who use willpower more than commitment strategies. The researchers asked 400 online participants to give a small amount of money to one of two partners, saying the partner could choose to keep the entire amount or give some of it back. Meanwhile, participants were told that one of the partners used willpower to resist checking out social media sites while working, and the other used a blocking app. Overwhelmingly, participants chose to give their money to the first partner, 69 percent compared to 31 percent, showing that they trusted the person who used willpower more to give back some of the money. The results indicate that participants believed the person who used willpower put in more effort and was therefore considered more trustworthy.

But that way of thinking may be flawed, Zlatev says. “There’s an argument to be made that the person using a commitment device might both care more and be more self-controlled because they are thinking about doing this in advance, rather than leaving it to the last minute—and that maybe it even takes more effort to sign up for the program,” says Zlatev.

In fact, in a follow-up study, not yet published, he and Kristal found evidence that the person who chose to use the commitment strategy was more intrinsically motivated to succeed.

People question the integrity of those who choose commitment strategies. In later studies, Zlatev and Kristal asked participants to rate people on their degree of integrity based on their use of a commitment strategy involving paying a friend $5 if they failed to follow through on a goal to avoid alcohol or junk food, get a flu shot, or go to the gym. In every case, the researchers found that participants rated someone who used that strategy as having less integrity than someone who didn’t.

People worry that using a commitment strategy makes them look bad. In another study, participants were less likely to choose an external commitment strategy if they thought others might find out.

How to combat commitment anxiety

All of this leads to a conundrum: If using commitment strategies is helpful in achieving goals and may even represent more dedication to the task at hand, can people be convinced to use them more? “It will require some way of making people feel more comfortable using them,” Zlatev says. 

In a business setting, he notes, one possible solution is to take away the choice of using commitment techniques, for example, by requiring social media blockers on company computers. “If a manager puts one of these strategies in place, it’s not the employee’s decision, so that might lessen the negative evaluation,” Zlatev says. One downside, however, is that employees have less freedom over how they get their work done, Zlatev says.

As an alternative, a boss might consider providing a menu of options of different commitment strategies while presenting information on their efficacy to lessen the stigma of using them. “If it’s institutionalized as part of the system,” he says, “then maybe it provides cover for someone who ends up choosing it.”

Either way, Zlatev hopes that as awareness grows about the usefulness of these strategies, more people might see them as helpful ways to achieve their goals—and also stop looking down on others who use them. After all, he says, willpower alone often doesn’t work.