A new series of studies suggests that to achieve long-term goals, finding enjoyment in the process is a better predictor of success than focusing on the importance of the outcome. Research recently published in Psychological Science indicates that this principle applies to a wide range of personal goals, holds true across different cultures, and can be used to causally increase a person’s engagement with their objectives.
Every year, millions of people set ambitious New Year’s resolutions, from eating healthier to saving money, only to abandon them within weeks. This common struggle prompted a team of researchers—Kaitlin Woolley from Cornell University, Laura M. Giurge from the London School of Economics, and Ayelet Fishbach from the University of Chicago—to investigate the underlying motivations that separate success from failure in long-term goal pursuit.
The researchers focused on two types of motivation. Extrinsic motivation is the drive to pursue a goal as a means to a separate end, like exercising to improve long-term health. This is typically why people set difficult goals in the first place; they are willing to endure short-term costs for a larger, later reward. In contrast, intrinsic motivation is the experience of pursuing a goal as an end in itself, where the activity is inherently enjoyable or engaging. A runner who is intrinsically motivated simply enjoys the act of running.
Given that people often set goals for extrinsic reasons, one might assume that the perceived importance of a goal would be the primary factor in sticking with it. The research team, however, hypothesized the opposite. They proposed that because the benefits of extrinsic goals are often delayed, they can be mentally “discounted” over time. Immediate rewards, like the enjoyment captured by intrinsic motivation, might be a more powerful engine for sustained effort over the long haul. The study aimed to test whether intrinsic motivation could better predict—and even cause—long-term adherence to goals.
“This paper builds on a stream of research on intrinsic motivation I’d started with Ayelet Fishbach in graduate school and continued with Laura Giurge during her postdoc at Cornell,” explained Woolley, a professor of marketing at Cornell SC Johnson College of Business.
“In most of my research, I studied short-term persistence—like a single study session or gym visit—and was curious how these effects would play out over longer time horizons. One prior study followed people for two months, but that still felt relatively short. So with this project, I wanted to test how these motivational dynamics unfold over a full year, across a wide range of personal goals.”
The first study followed 2,000 U.S. adults over the course of a full year. All participants had set a New Year’s resolution and were asked to report their intrinsic and extrinsic motivation for pursuing it. Intrinsic motivation was measured through questions about how enjoyable or engaging the activity was, while extrinsic motivation reflected perceptions of usefulness and long-term importance. These ratings were collected at four timepoints throughout the year. Participants also rated their success in sticking with their resolution and reported whether they had continued, abandoned, or completed the goal.
The most common types of resolutions included physical health (nearly 40%), financial goals, and healthy consumption. Notably, participants were generally more extrinsically motivated than intrinsically motivated, suggesting that most resolutions were set for long-term gains rather than short-term enjoyment.
Despite being set for extrinsic reasons, the resolutions people stuck with were those that were enjoyable to pursue. Across the year, higher levels of intrinsic motivation predicted greater self-reported success and a higher likelihood of completing the resolution. By contrast, extrinsic motivation did not significantly predict adherence or completion.
The results remained consistent even when accounting for how easy or long-lasting participants expected their resolutions to be. Additionally, the findings held up across multiple statistical approaches and robustness checks, suggesting that people who found their goals more enjoyable were more likely to stay committed over time.
Interestingly, the researchers also found that people underestimated the importance of intrinsic motivation. In follow-up surveys, most participants believed extrinsic factors like usefulness or long-term importance would better predict whether they or others would stick to a resolution. This misjudgment could explain why people tend to select extrinsically motivated goals that are harder to maintain.
In their second study, the researchers aimed to test whether the findings from Study 1 would generalize to a non-Western population. They recruited 500 adults in China who had recently set goals for the Lunar New Year. Participants reported their intrinsic and extrinsic motivations for pursuing the resolution and, one month later, indicated how successful they had been at sticking with it.
Compared to the U.S. sample, participants in China were more likely to set professional or learning-related goals. While their goals also tended to be more extrinsically than intrinsically motivated, the relative distribution allowed for cross-cultural comparisons.
As in the U.S. sample, intrinsic motivation significantly predicted whether Chinese participants stuck to their goals after one month. Extrinsic motivation did not predict adherence. This replication suggests that the influence of intrinsic enjoyment on long-term behavior is not limited to Western contexts.
Although extrinsic motivation varied less in this sample—possibly contributing to its weaker predictive power—follow-up analyses confirmed that even when variance was equated, intrinsic motivation remained the stronger predictor of adherence.
“We found that this pattern emerged among participants in the United States and China,” Woolley told PsyPost. “While our year-long study was conducted with U.S. participants, we conceptually replicated the effects on a shorter time horizon with participants from China. Participants in these two studies set different resolutions—US participants focused on resolutions mainly related to healthy eating/exercise, whereas in China, participants’ goals for the new year related to career or financial pursuits. So we were able to generalize our findings both to a different population and also to a different distribution of resolutions.”
To test whether the pattern held for real-world behavior, the third study focused on participants who had set a goal to walk more. The researchers recruited 439 people who tracked their steps using a smartphone app. Participants submitted their daily step counts for 14 days and reported how much they enjoyed walking (intrinsic motivation) versus how important or useful they believed it was (extrinsic motivation).
The researchers found that intrinsic motivation significantly predicted how many steps people took on average each day. Participants who found walking enjoyable walked about 1,250 more steps per day than those who were less intrinsically motivated. In contrast, extrinsic motivation had no statistically significant effect.
These findings held even when the researchers adjusted for skewed data and conducted additional analyses, such as applying log transformations or capping extreme values. Once again, intrinsic motivation proved to be the key driver of actual behavior, not just intentions.
Finally, the fourth study tested whether increasing intrinsic motivation could actively improve engagement with a new health behavior. Participants were asked to download a mobile app that scans food and cosmetic products to evaluate their health impact. Before using the app, participants were randomly assigned to one of two groups: one that framed the app as fun and surprising (intrinsic motivation), and another that described it as informative and useful (extrinsic motivation). App usage was then tracked over a 24-hour period. The final sample included 763 individuals.
Participants in the intrinsic motivation group scanned significantly more products with the app—on average, over 25% more—than those in the extrinsic motivation group. These results suggest that framing a task as enjoyable can causally increase engagement, even for health-related behaviors that are often framed in terms of utility or future rewards.
“People set extrinsic goals – goals that are useful or important in the long run,” Woolley said. “But, they are more likely to stick with goals that are intrinsically motivating – those they pursue as an end in itself, often because they offer interest and enjoyment in the moment. In other words, people are more likely to abandon goals that lack intrinsic motivation, but when they set goals, they aren’t focused on setting goals that are intrinsically motivating.”
“One of the big surprises for me was just how stable the effect of intrinsic motivation on goal adherence was. I knew that intrinsic motivation mattered for goal adherence in the short-term, but I thought that motivational dynamics may change over time. But we found robust evidence across a year, and for the large variety of personal goals people set for themselves, that intrinsic motivation was a stronger predictor of goal adherence than extrinsic motivation.”
Many people assume that long-term commitment is fueled by the promise of future rewards, yet this research suggests that enjoyment and immediate satisfaction play a bigger role in sustaining effort. But that doesn’t mean people should abandon extrinsic goals, the researchers caution.
“We find that people often set goals for extrinsic reasons, but tend to persist in goals that feel intrinsically motivating,” Woolley explained. “One concern I have is that this might lead people to believe they should only set intrinsic goals. But that’s not the takeaway. I’d actually encourage people to continue setting extrinsic goals—goals that feel important, useful, or even life-changing—but to design their pursuit in ways that make the process more intrinsically enjoyable. That shift can help people stick with the goals that matter most to them.”
The study, “Adherence to Personal Resolutions Across Time, Culture, and Goal Domains,” was authored by Kaitlin Woolley, Laura M. Giurge, and Ayelet Fishbach.
