Setting goals helped people change behaviour a little, and difficult goals helped most.

The review

1. 01

   Who took part

   The review pooled 155 studies with 16,523 people, most of them university students, and about half were women. The rest were adults and school children.

2. 02

   What they did

   People were given a goal to work toward, usually one set by someone else. The other group got the same task with a vague goal such as 'do your best', or only had their results measured.

3. 03

   What happened

   Setting a goal helped people a little more than the other groups did, and difficult goals helped most. Goals set in public or shared with a group were linked to bigger gains, though few comparisons used them. A test found signs that small studies with clear results were more likely to be published.

What the review found

1. Helped

   Across 155 studies, setting a goal helped people change their behaviour more than the other group did.

   • Action: Set a specific goaltested

   Pooled analysis of 384 studies with 16,523 people · vs people with a vague goal or none at all · ⚠ most studies had serious flaws; signs that small negative studies went unpublished

2. Helped

   Across 127 comparisons, hard goals helped people more than easy or moderate ones did.

   • Action: Set a specific goaltested

   Pooled analysis of 127 studies · vs people with easy or moderate goals · ⚠ most studies had serious flaws

3. Helped

   Only 58 of 255 comparisons set goals in public, but those goals helped more than goals set less publicly.

   • Rule: Ask someone to expect youtested

   Pooled analysis of 255 studies · vs people whose goals were set less publicly · ⚠ most studies had serious flaws

4. Helped

   Only 48 of 384 comparisons used group goals, but they helped more than goals set for one person.

   • Action: Team up on a shared goaltested

   Pooled analysis of 384 studies · vs people with goals set for one person · ⚠ most studies had serious flaws

Source