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

你的新年许愿实施得怎么样？还去健身房吗？如果不是，你并不孤单。

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?

让我们想想激励措施。如果有位好心的赞助者付给你一小笔钱——比如每天几英镑——让你在整个1月份坚持你的新年决心，现在1月份已经过去了，那能帮助你坚持健身吗？

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。乐观的看法是，通过金钱奖励让你在1月份照顾好自己，这位神秘的赞助者会鼓励你形成良好的习惯，在今年余下的时间坚持下去。最明显的事例是，如果你尝试戒烟，通过金钱奖励帮助你度过戒烟过程中最糟糕的时期，可能大有帮助。或许饮食和运动也可以像这样形成习惯。

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，一些心理学家认为，付钱是有害无益的，因为金钱会蚕食我们锻炼的内在动机。按照这个理论，一旦我们开始付钱让人们去健身房或者减肥，他们做这些事情的发自内心的欲望就会被腐蚀。当支付停止的时候，情况会比从未支付的时候还糟糕。

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.

外部奖励可能挤走内在动机的理念被称为过度合理化(overjustification)。1973年，马克莱珀(Mark Lepper)、戴维格林(David Greene)和理查德尼斯比特(Richard Nisbett)做了一个著名的研究。在实验中，一些学龄前儿童得到许诺，如果用一种特殊的水彩笔画画，他们就可以获得闪闪发光的证书作为奖励。另外一些儿童则没有得到这样的许诺。一周左右之后，当这种特殊的水彩笔被重新引入幼儿园的时候，研究者发现，在不提供奖励的情况下，之前画画时被许诺授予证书的儿童花在这些水彩笔上的时间比其他孩子少一半。傻子才免费画画呢。

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，锻炼和涂色存在一个巨大的差异：很多儿童都喜欢水彩笔，然而很多成年人都不喜欢锻炼。如果你本来就没有任何内在动机，支付很难挤掉你的内在动机。对过度合理化效应的系统性评估似乎表明，奖励不会损害人们本来就觉得没有吸引力的活动。

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，付钱让人们去锻炼的想法可能毕竟是值得思考的。2009年，两位行为心理学家——加里餠尔尼斯(Gary Charness)和乌里格尼兹(Uri Gneezy)——发表了尝试付钱让人们去锻炼的一对实验的结果。研究人员付给一些实验对象100美元，让他们一个月去健身房8次，而对于两个组的实验对象，研究人员或者付给他们25美元，让他们仅去一次健身房，或者根本不花钱请他们去健身房。

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.

结果对习惯形成的观点是一个胜利。即使支付停止以后效果仍在。在一项研究中，奖励支付结束7周之后，实验对象的运动频度是开始接受奖励前的两倍；在另一项研究中，支付结束13周之后，试验对象的运动频度是开始接受奖励前的3倍。那些本来就经常去健身房的人不会改变他们的行为——所以不存在排挤效应——但那些原本不经常锻炼的人的锻炼次数大幅增加。丹阿克兰(Dan Acland)和马修利维(Matthew Levy)后来的一项研究发现，学生们也存在类似的习惯形成效应，不过遗憾的是，好习惯往往不能延续到寒假以后。在其他实验中，奖励支付在帮助吸烟者戒烟方面也较为成功。

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.

有一个好心赞助者付钱让你保持健康，养成良好习惯，那当然很好。但哪里能找到这样一个人呢？看看镜子吧——你的赞助者或许就是你自己。

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.

受到诺贝尔奖得主托马斯∠鞌(Thomas Schelling)的启发，经济学家迷上了承诺战略的理念——在诱惑变得不可抵挡之前，你品行高尚的那部分自我会采取行动，战胜你较弱的那部分自我。一个简单的承诺策略是把500英镑托付给一位值得信赖的朋友，嘱托他们只有在你坚持你的新年决心时才把钱还给你。

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.

承诺战略是否会让你付钱给自己去健身房？可能确实会。经济学家希瑟贠尔(Heather Bower)、马克施特尔(Mark Stehr)和贾斯廷缠德诺(Justin Sydnor)最近发表了以某一家《财富》500强公司的1000名员工为对象的长期实验的结果。实验最初，一些雇员在一个月期间每去公司健身房一次就可以获得10美元。然后，研究人员向其中一些人提供机会，将钱放入一个承诺储蓄账户：如果他们坚持锻炼，这笔钱将被返还，否则就会捐给慈善机构。这项策略并不是万灵药：大多数人并没有选择这个选项，也并不是每个人都能坚持他们的目标。但即使是3年后，那些获得承诺账户的人锻炼的几率仍比对照组高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.

这与我的个人经验相吻合。我曾经写过一篇专栏文章，讲述了我给一个叫Stickk的公司1000美元的经历。该公司承诺，如果我不经常锻炼，就会把钱捐赠出去。这份合约仅持续3个月——我成功了。我的钱返还给我8年后的今天，我依然坚持着这个习惯。