Calien comments on New year's resolutions: Things worth considering for next year - Less Wrong Discussion
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Scenario 2 sound like it would be bad for me as well as scenario 1. I'm fairly uncomfortable talking about weight goals with most people - it feels like it would be saying I'm too fat or something negative like that, so unless they've revealed a similar problem to me I don't go there. So in that situation I'd expect to feel insulted. It's not a failure mode that I fall into any more, but where I was expecting that scenario to go is "When you read all the posts your brain goes; yeah this is too hard, I feel bad, I want chocolate. And at the end of the month you've gained a kilo."
Might be gender-related. Women experiencing that sort of discussion to go in the direction of judging appearance along with a greater negative affect from being judged unattractive. Men experiencing it being treated as just another health-related goal and being less concerned with judgment if they admit failure.
It's possible that if I did made such a post and read those responses it would go better than that, but it would be anxiety-inducing for me to go about testing that. Tentative suggestion: sharing goals I feel like I "should" be achieving is bad, sharing goals I just want to achieve is variable but expected positive.
there is probably a gender variability on this issue.
The paper seems to suggest a specific hypothesis as to why: your brain does the "I got all the congratulations, I must be done" process and this causes you to not try as hard on your goal. I don't know how true that theory is, but it seems reasonable.
I am keen for future research in the area.