So we've been talking about all these ways that we can hack our ability to engage in these better behaviors, better thought patterns and better emotions. And another thing that we can hack to do that is our associations, we have these minds that are very good at picking up on connections in the world. What researchers call associations, which we're going to define as these mental connections between concepts, behaviors, events, feelings that are formed through experience. When you see things connected in the world temporally, you form this association, you form this connection between them, and it just like lives in your mind for a long time. To see some of these natural associations that your brain has picked up, if I put up this image, it wouldn't be so surprising if I put this, right? Your brain kind of expects it, or if I put this image up for those you like memes, you expect. You have it, you're somewhere in your brain, is that connection, right, you just associated. But the key is our brain picks up on these associations so easily. We can use them to try to do behaviors that we want to do a little bit more. And we can do that, harness these associations better through what researchers refer to as implementation intentions. What are implementation intentions? Well, it's a strategy where you want to remind yourself of the if then plan, if something happens then I will do a behavior that will promote my happiness. But you repeat it in your head over and over, again, so you get this associative connection. And the remarkable thing is when you do this right, as soon as the thing, if this happens, as soon as that happens, you kind of get that plan, that good behavior that you wanted for free, it makes it easier to do that good behavior. This is a little bit abstract, so let's look at implementation intentions and action. Let's say you're the kind of person who forgets your keys all the time, you leave your house to go to school, you forgot your keys and now you're locked out. How can you get your keys? Well, you can use an implementation attention, you could figure out, okay, I need an if then plan, if something happens, remember my keys. And you realize, coat, in the time of the year when it's not 100 degrees out like it is today, usually have to take a coat to go outside, and so you repeat the following association in your head. If I put on my coat, remember to check for my keys, put on my coat, remember check my keys, put on my coat, and you replay that in your head. And naturally what happens is, as soon as you're putting on your coat, the memory like, coat, it's a cute, just like the habit loop, your brain is like, yeah, cute. And you seem to remember check for your keys, right? And the evidence suggests it doesn't just make it easier for you to remember, it also makes it easier for you to do it. And this is the power of implementation intentions, when you reverse the implementation intention, when it's Tuesday and I get home from school, I'm going to do my meditation. When it's Tuesday, I get home from school, I'm going to do my meditation, it just makes it easier for you to do that behavior. And so implementation intentions are powerful and there's a couple awesome things about them that are good for hacking our behavior. One, is that because you say if this thing, you wind up focusing your attention on a specific cue, that your brain is waiting for, it's waiting for you to put on the jacket, it's waiting for you to get home at a certain time. You get to pick the queue and rehearse it in your brain so that it makes it easier for you to do this behavior. In addition that you get an association for free between that cue and whatever you've planned to do. So you're making this like tight connection between the behavior you want and the cue that you've seen, making it easier for you to do the behavior. And finally, implementation intentions have these features where you can use them to do a particular behavior, like I want to remember my keys, or you can use them to inhibit a behavior, if this happens, don't do this other thing. So you can use it to stop bad habits too. So one of my favorite studies that looked at the power of implementation intentions to use all these strategies will be talking about, happened in the context of a study that looked at athletes, who are trying to reduce their negative thoughts. So, if you're an athlete in high school you probably sometimes know that right before me or right before you're supposed to do something, you can get in these neck spirals where you talk badly to yourself. What if you use implementation intentions to fight that sing all the strategies we talked about? And so these researchers had athletes do this, they would have them do the implementation intention, if I feel scared, so your basketball player, you feel scared at your free throws. I feel scared of my free throw, I will calm myself down and say, Laura, you're going to do fine, you're going to hit the basket, you're going to win, right? If I get scared of my free throw, I'm going to think, Laurie, you can do it, and you just practice it enough and you can do it better. What are these researchers find, they find it's a powerful strategy not just to get these athletes to reduce their negative thoughts, but also to perform better. So they actually do better athletically, once they're using these strategies, and so implementation intentions sound great, how can we implement them? Well, again, we have our psychprotips. And psychprotip here isn't just use implementation intentions, it's to kind of soup up the implementation intentions you use through the use of an even more complicated acronym that involves them. And it's an acronym known as WOOP, you can WOOP it up to achieve your goals. What is WOOP? Well, it's an implementation intention strategy that the NYU researcher Gabriele has come up with. A quick acronym that we can use whenever we want to do something, and WOOP stands for a wish outcome obstacle and plan. And so here's how it works. The WOOP method is one in which you pick a particular goal, that's your wish, the first part of the acronym, what's your goal? I want to meditate more and you sit there and you think about it, but then you do the second step, which is the outcome, what would be the outcome, man. If I meditated more, I'd be calmer, I get all those benefits that Professor Santos was talking about, it would just be great. But then you do the next O step, which is the obstacles, okay, it would be great, but what are the obstacles? You're like, get really busy when I get home from school, it's like hard to kind of sit down, you're coming up with all these reasons, you might not do it. And that's when you load in the implementation intention, the last step is that p which stands for your if then plan. So you say, okay, if I feel busy after school then I will just remind myself it's only five minutes and just sit down and do it, right? If I am tempted, my wish is that I want to get off TikTok, the outcome would be, that would be great. I have so much more free time, I'd feel less stressed out. What are the obstacles? Well, I'm really tempted for TikTok, the notification goes off and I just want to look at it, if then plan, if notification, put phone in my pocket, if notification, phone in my pocket. Gabriella has found that the method is an incredibly powerful way to get through to goals that are otherwise really hard. One of my favorite studies was done by the researcher, Angela Duckworth's and colleagues on this. She taught fifth graders this technique and had them use the technique for some important goal at school. So this is often something like improving their GPA, their school attendance or whatever. So you pick a wish that you want about your school performance and you use WOOP. What happened? Well in every domain that she looked at, the WOOP method worked a lot, relative to controls for GPA for example, these students who were taught the WOOP method was able to get significant increases in GPA. So you can use it to kind of hack your academics, but you can use it also to hack all these behaviors we've been talking about for your happiness. And so, that is the power of our associations. They're just going to happen naturally. Your brain is ready to do them, why not use them to promote your happiness? [MUSIC]
