The Saad Truth with Dr. Saad - December 31, 2025


The Psychology of New Year's Resolutions (The Saad Truth with Dr. Saad_949)

Topics
love diet and exercise resolutions
Hosted by
Gad Saad
Mentioned
Alexander Rosenthal Martin Oskarsson Gerhard Anderson Suicidal Empathy Resolutions
Islam and Islamism Are Peaceful - Islamismism is Dangerous (The Saad Truth with Dr. Saad_947) A Deep Dive Into Evolutionary Psychology (The Saad Truth with Dr. Saad_950)

Episode Stats


Length

7 minutes

Words per minute

148.2

Word count

1,085

Sentence count

84

Harmful content

Misogyny

1

sentences flagged


Summary

Summaries generated with gmurro/bart-large-finetuned-filtered-spotify-podcast-summ .

In this episode, Dr. Scott Saad discusses the psychology of New Year's resolutions, and why a positive approach to a goal is more likely to be successful than a negative one. He also talks about his own experience with a New Years Resolution and how he managed to stick to it.

Transcript

Transcript generated with Whisper (turbo).
Misogyny classifications generated with MilaNLProc/bert-base-uncased-ear-misogyny .
Topics generated with Qwen2.5-3B-Instruct.
Hosts, guests, and mentioned names generated with spaCy (en_core_web_sm), reconciled against Wikidata.
00:00:00.480 Hi everybody, this is Scott Saad. I don't know if anybody's here. I've only done this maybe two or three times.
00:00:08.580 In any case, I wanted to quickly discuss New Year's resolutions.
00:00:14.460 Many years ago, in 2009, I wrote an article on my Psychology Today column discussing the psychology of New Year's resolutions.
00:00:24.500 And since, there's been quite a bit of research on the topic.
00:00:26.980 So, forgive me as I look away. I want to just mention a couple of things.
00:00:31.560 This is a paper titled, A Large-Scale Experiment on New Year's Resolutions.
00:00:36.920 Approach-Oriented Goals Are More Successful Than Avoidance-Oriented Goals.
00:00:41.840 So, let me explain what that means.
00:00:43.860 Approach-Oriented Goals would be framing a goal positively.
00:00:48.140 I'd like to exercise so that I can be in better health.
00:00:52.200 Approach-Avoidance Goal would be framed negatively.
00:00:55.340 I'd like to exercise so I don't become sick.
00:00:59.140 So, even though both of these might be equivalent objectives, the frame, either positive approach or negative avoidance,
00:01:08.340 ends up having an effect on the likelihood of you sticking to the New Year's resolution.
00:01:15.120 Let me just mention, so this is based on, this is in Plus One, the journal, by Martin Oskarsson,
00:01:24.640 Per Karbring, Gerhard Anderson, and Alexander Rosenthal, published December 9th, 2020.
00:01:31.300 So, let me just, they asked 1,066 people a whole bunch of questions about their New Year's resolutions.
00:01:42.520 So, if you adopt a approach avoidance resolution, you will be, by the end of the year, I think it's a one-year timeline,
00:01:53.680 58.9% of the people were successful in their New Year's resolution, whereas if they take an avoidance approach, New Year's resolution, 47.1%.
00:02:05.200 So, more than 10% higher if you take a positive frame versus a negative frame.
00:02:10.540 What are some of the top topics that people, you know, make resolutions about?
00:02:16.980 Well, it's not, it's not difficult to imagine what they are.
00:02:19.980 Let's look at them.
00:02:20.700 Hold on a second.
00:02:21.880 I'm looking for it.
00:02:23.120 Stay with me.
00:02:26.120 Where is it?
00:02:27.040 Hold on.
00:02:27.740 Differences between, oh, here we go.
00:02:30.300 So, the number one, this is the percentage of all New Year's resolutions.
00:02:38.720 Number one, 33% is relating to physical health.
00:02:44.780 Makes sense.
00:02:45.880 Number two, I mean, these are, in a sense, one and the same.
00:02:49.400 Number two is weight loss.
00:02:51.780 So, I guess if you say, I want to do, I want to engage in behaviors that improve my health, would fit on the first one.
00:02:58.440 If you say, I want to lose 15 pounds, it would fit in the second one, even though losing weight improves your health.
00:03:04.280 So, number one, 33% is physical health.
00:03:07.080 Number two, weight loss at 20%.
00:03:09.920 Number three, eating-related issues, 13%.
00:03:13.260 Number four, self-improvement, 9%.
00:03:16.540 Number five, mental health and sleep, 5%.
00:03:20.560 And then we have work.
00:03:22.180 These are all below 5%.
00:03:23.680 Work and studies, tobacco, I'm guessing, stop smoking, consumption-related issues, personal finance, drinking, friends and families, home environment, hobbies, engagement.
00:03:36.600 And last on this list, at only 1% is related to love.
00:03:40.580 That's maybe surprising.
00:03:41.540 So, you would think people might say, oh, I'm going to try new approaches to find my future wife or husband.
00:03:48.340 But it's way lower.
00:03:50.040 So, 33% is the top one at physical health.
00:03:52.720 And the lowest one is love at 1%.
00:03:55.520 The other thing I was going to mention is some of you know that a few years ago when we were on, you know, during the COVID lockdown, I had lost a lot of weight.
00:04:08.340 Many people had asked me then, you know, what was the secret?
00:04:11.120 So, let me mention some of these since they very much relate to a lot of the listed New Year's resolutions here in terms of improving your health and so on.
00:04:22.400 Bottom line, what I did was I made sure to at least exercise 15,000 steps a day and eat roughly no more than 1,500 calories a day.
00:04:34.220 Of course, the key issue here is consistency.
00:04:38.420 One of the reasons why I haven't been able to go back to my ideal weight is because I might do five days of dieting and then two days off because, you know, whatever, we're celebrating something.
00:04:51.180 Well, during those two days, you end up putting back all the weight that you lost the first five days.
00:04:56.440 And so, during COVID, because there was no choice to go anywhere, we were stuck at home.
00:05:01.140 And so, I ended up, you know, not having the pull of having to choose where to end up, right, as a restaurant.
00:05:09.620 And so, every single day I was consistent.
00:05:12.340 18 months later, I had lost 86 pounds.
00:05:15.920 I'm a bit heavier now, probably at least 10, 15 pounds heavier, still much better than before I started.
00:05:24.820 But now I'm trying to lose it again.
00:05:26.420 So, maybe that's my New Year's resolution.
00:05:28.760 The other thing I would say, so 15,000 steps a day, which is quite a bit.
00:05:34.140 I mean, it takes probably two and a half hours of exercise to maintain 15,000 steps.
00:05:40.760 The way that I made sure that I didn't pass 1,500 calories is I used an app.
00:05:46.680 Well, my wife used an app where she would enter every single thing into the app. 1.00
00:05:53.520 So, by the end of the day, I knew exactly what I was accountable to.
00:05:56.900 The other thing I would say is behavioral specificity matters.
00:06:00.780 Let's suppose you go away on an all-inclusive, all-you-can-eat, you know, vacation.
00:06:07.260 If you say, my resolution is to make sure that I don't overeat, well, that is so vague that it becomes very difficult to implement.
00:06:17.600 But if you say, hence behavioral specificity, I will never have more than one plate at the buffet, that already is introducing specificity, so it makes it more manageable to actually adhere to the plan.
00:06:32.640 So, whatever your goals are, I hope that they prove to be successful.
00:06:37.440 Wishing you a fantastic new year, 2026.
00:06:42.580 Remember, Suicidal Empathy is going to be available for pre-order soon.
00:06:47.780 Make sure to go out and get it because, as I've explained previously, when the book is released on day one,
00:06:54.540 all of the accumulated pre-orders are counted as sales on that first day.
00:06:59.940 So, if I want to make sure that the book becomes a bestseller, it really is important to have a strong pre-order figures.
00:07:08.660 So, please make sure to pre-order it.
00:07:11.060 I will announce when it is available for pre-order.
00:07:14.440 Have a great year.
00:07:15.860 Wishing you health, love, and happiness.
00:07:18.480 I'll talk to you soon.
00:07:19.140 Cheers.