Fresh Start Effect: How to Motivate Users with New Beginnings

The Fresh-Start Effect

Have you ever made a New Year’s resolution? Even if you haven’t, you probably know at least a few people who have set a goal for themselves, taking advantage of the fresh start that a new year brings.

Special occasions or temporal landmarks, such as a new year, cause people to reflect on their lives in a big-picture way, which in turn inspires them to set goals for better behavior. This phenomenon is referred to as the fresh-start effect.

Definition: According to the fresh-start effect, people are more likely to take action towards a goal after temporal landmarks that represent new beginnings.

Examples of landmarks that trigger the fresh-start effect include the start of a new week, month, year, school semester, or birthday. Temporal landmarks that are personally meaningful, such as job changes, moving to a new city for the first time, and observance of public or religious holidays, can also cause this effect.

Most of us have ways that we’d like to improve (e.g., exercising more, eating healthier, putting more money aside for savings). We also remember times in our past when we’ve failed at those goals. Psychologists studying the fresh-start effect show that it works because highlighting meaningful occasions creates a clean slate for people to make better decisions. Temporal landmarks that signify a new time period—a fresh start– help us leave our missteps in the past and create an untarnished feeling for our present and future selves. This feeling opens the path for people to initiate goal-oriented aspirational behaviors.

Sometimes the effect occurs in anticipation of the new beginning. For example, researchers Adam Alter and Hal Hershfield show that when approaching a new decade in chronological age (e.g., 9-enders: 29, 39, 49, etc.), people are more likely to examine their lives for meaning. As a result of that reflection, they engage in meaning-seeking behaviors. For example, among 500 first-time marathon runners, the 9-enders were overrepresented by 48% compared with age groups ending in a different digit.

The Fresh-Start Effect in UX Design

Here’s one obvious implication of the 9-enders phenomenon: if a site knows its users’ birthdates, then it could take advantage of that extra motivation that happens around end of a decade. (Of course, you shouldn’t force users to share their birthdates only for this purpose.) Fresh starts are a good opportunity to nudge users in a direction that is beneficial either for them or for the site: they may finally get to learn that foreign language, or sign up for that continuing education course, or hire a financial advisor.

To incorporate new beginnings as a way to encourage users to do something, start by considering what motivates your users.

1. Understand your users’ aspirational behaviors. How do they want to improve themselves? Do their aspirations change depending on the time of year? It can help to think of the larger goal first, followed by behaviors associated with achieving that goal. For example, a goal might be to get finances in order. An aspirational behavior for that goal could be to commit to saving $X per month for retirement.
2. Connect your users’ motivations to what your company offers. How does your organization help users pursue their goals? Remember that goals (and associated behaviors) exist in a range of contexts, such as physical health, educational, professional, and interpersonal goals. In which of those areas can your organization make a difference?
3. Pair your message with a temporal landmark. Highlighting a new beginning reminds people that time has passed; they can start fresh and work towards their goals.

Below are a few other ways to incorporate the fresh-start effect in your designs.

• Time email messages to align with new beginnings. Consider pairing campaigns with special occasions, holidays, first-time experiences, birthdays, or other landmarks. The important thing here is to really know which occasions are most meaningful to your different audiences. Understanding your personas is key here.
• Adjust content and messaging to make temporal landmarks salient. Remember, the goal is to highlight the separation of the past from the upcoming new beginning. Small labeling and copy changes are often enough to distinguish an occasion from other ordinary events. For example, framing March 20^th as “The first day of spring” creates a stronger temporal landmark than “The third Thursday in March.” Similarly, asking people to first reflect on why a landmark is meaningful primes them to consider that landmark more significant.

• Combine campaigns or requests that connect meaningful events to aspirational behaviors. Take advantage of a landmark by promoting a related service or offering.

Conclusion and Ethical Considerations

The fresh-start effect leverages peoples’ desires to distance themselves from an imperfect past self, and behave in line with a new, positive self-image, and therefore, take actions that support those aspirations. Designers can use this effect as a tool to encourage people to take desirable actions supporting wellness and self-improvement.

As we discuss in our full-day course on Persuasive Web Design, any time we manipulate designs to take advantage of what we know about human behavior, its imperative to do so ethically and responsibly. The studies referenced in this article all used goals that were chosen by the participants, or that were related to participants’ personal or financial wellness. Ideally sites should nudge users in directions that are beneficial for both parties involved (companies and users), and not towards behaviors that are destructive for users. The insights from social psychology can be used for benevolent or dark purposes, and we encourage organizations to only use them when the outcome will benefit people, not just the organizations’ key-performance metrics.

Learn more about priming and framing in our full-day course on the Human Mind.

References

Alter, A. L., & Hershfield, H. E. (2014). People search for meaning when they approach a new decade in chronological age. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, USA, 111, 17066–17070.

Dai, H., Milkman, K. L., & Riis, J. (2014). The fresh start effect: Temporal landmarks motivate aspirational behavior. Management Science, 10, 2563–2582.

Dai, H., Milkman, K. L., & Riis, J. (2015). Put Your Imperfections Behind You: Temporal Landmarks Spur Goal Initiation When They Signal New Beginnings. Psychological Science, Vol. 26(12) 1927–1936.