People are more likely to exercise after a birthday or the start of a week, month, year or semester (7pc, 33pc, 14pc, 11pc and 47pc, respectively, relative to baseline), suggesting that temporal landmarks make it easier to engage in aspirational behaviour, say Hengchen Dai, Katherine L. Milkman and Jason Riis of The Wharton School. The researchers found that these landmarks create new ‘mental accounting periods’ that distance the self from its past imperfections.

(Source: The Wharton School, University of Pennsylvania)

Published in Dawn, Economic & Business, September 1st, 2014