ASU professor says best way to keep resolutions is to make them 'SMART'

It's the middle of January. How are those New Year's resolutions going?

If you're like most people, they're swiftly receding from memory. According to Forbes, 63 percent of Americans make resolutions, but only 8 percent keep them.

So why do we bother, year after year, if the failure rate is so high?

Paul Karoly, a psychology professor at Arizona State University, might know why. Karoly studies goals and motivation and claims a resolution is just a cultural function.

“What is a New Year's resolution? It’s a meme,” Karoly said. “It’s a culturally given thing. ‘Why don’t I lose weight, or get healthier?’ It has very little meaning besides that."

Karoly said the reason why we make them is because it's in line with Skinner’s Verbal Operant: where people enjoy praise — especially drunk people — and resolutions are an insincere way to get praise.

“You get drunk, you're with drunk people. You say something positive like ‘I am going to lose weight!’ and then everybody congratulates you for thinking that,” Karoly said. “Then you sober up and say, 'Tomorrow I’ll do that,' and you never do it.”

Even if you weren’t knocking a couple back when you made the resolution, adding onto a goal’s nearly inevitable failure is the abstinence violation effect, referring to a person's sense of loss of control over his or her behavior that has an overwhelming and demoralizing effect. For example, if you made a resolution to stop eating chips and you have one chip, you proceed to have the full bag because you already failed by eating one.

When applying it to other common resolutions like “go to the gym four times this week” or “quit smoking,” it becomes evident how easy it can seem to fail.

However, he still finds the process of New Year’s resolutions a bit misleading — and a waste of time.

“New Year’s resolutions are an example of weak intentions. Let's do something else,” Karoly said. “Make them lasting. If we were to make them last, if we had to, let's make it realistic. Let's make it smart.”

USDA Under Secretary Katie Wilson stops at ASU to talk about nutritional guidelines and food access

Few can fire up a crowd quite like Dr. Katie Wilson when it comes to talking people into eating their fruits and vegetables.

It may not sound like a sexy job, but it’s hers. And she does it well.

As the USDA Deputy Under Secretary for Food, Nutrition and Consumer Services under President Barack Obama, Wilson (pictured above, right) is responsible for improving the health and well-being of Americans by developing and promoting science-based dietary guidance and administering the USDA’s 15 nutrition assistance programs.

Prior to joining USDA, Wilson spent 23 years as a school nutrition director in several Wisconsin public school districts, served five years as the executive director for the National Food Service Management Institute, and was an assistant professor at the University of Mississippi.

On Thursday, Wilson visited with more than 50 students, faculty and researchers in ASU’s College of Health Solutions on the Downtown Phoenix campus to discuss how universities and educators helped shape the recently released USDA Dietary Guidelines — which are developed every five years.  

“School nutrition programs should be educational labs for children, and all of you need to be advocates for them,” Wilson said. “I encourage you all to get involved in the process because we need to hear your voice and we need your research and expertise.”

Wilson, who started her appointment on May 3, 2015, spoke to ASU Now about her surprise visit to ASU, how national nutritional policy is created and the role and function of the USDA.

Question: Your call to action for future teachers and researchers to get involved in the political process is interesting. Why is it so important for nutritional guidelines?

Answer: Writing regulation at the regulatory level means we’re only as good as what the scientists and researchers know and tell us. The field of nutrition in particular is evolving. We really don’t know a whole lot because it keeps changing, and that’s because the research keeps changing. We haven’t been dealing with nutrition as long as we have, specifically, with other kinds of issues. It’s also not a concrete issue. It’s very passionate, it’s very personal, it changes upon your demographic and age group, what your cultural preferences and experiences are. I think that if we can get people involved in the American process of writing these things, then we’re much further ahead.

Q: There are many issues behind food — social, economical, political — that go behind the making of policy. Is it the hardest aspect of your job, with so many voices and factors weighing in on the process?

A: That’s what makes it so difficult to deal with in this arena. It’s not cut and dry. It’s neither this nor that. Again, I think that’s why we have to go back to the American public and say, “That works. That doesn’t work.” What are we seeing? What are the trends? Then we have to listen to the scientists and how they have advanced nutrition to see how it reacts with the body and the whole medical aspect of it. We’ve made a lot of advances in the last 10 years, so we know a little more.

Q: There are differing opinions about funding free-meal programs. What are your thoughts on the issue?

A: I really and truly believe that anyone of us could fall on hardship tomorrow. We can’t get people back into the mainstream if they’re hungry. It just can’t be. We know that children don’t learn well if they’re hungry. The same with adults. You can’t function if you’re hungry and if you’re a single parent doing multiple jobs or managing children from multiple schools or having to figure out public transportation to get to your destination or job. If you’re hungry on top of all of that, there’s no way to figure it out. So how do we get people back on their feet and into the mainstream if they’re hungry? … We have the ability to feed everybody in this country and so we just have to figure out a way to make sure they get it.

Q: Most of your programs seem to be geared toward not only feeding children but also educating them about nutrition. We constantly hear about how America has become more obese as a nation, so when will we see that shift in behavior?

A: We have already started to see changes in schools regarding nutrition. Some of it is anecdotal; some of it is more research-based. There’s a brand-new article that just published in the American Medical Journal of Pediatrics. It shows that there’s a big difference in what they’re choosing and consuming. And they’re not being forced to. It’s a choice. We are seeing a shift. We’re seeing a difference because industry is saying, “Look, these healthy products are so popular that we’re going to put them in the commercial market.” We’re beginning to see a shift in the general population because they are asking for more information on food labels. They’re interested. The fact that we got tens of thousands of people giving their input and commenting on the USDA Dietary Guidelines for 2015 says people are paying attention. I believe people are beginning to relate good nutrition to a healthy lifestyle and longevity. We are beginning to see those changes in children, even though it takes time.

Q: It’s obvious you are passionate about what you do and teach.

A: I am. Every day I go home I know I’ve fought some battle somewhere that gave some kid access to food … and I’m OK with that.

Top photo by Charlie Leight/ASU Now

ASU engineer exploring new frontiers in human-robot collaborations

Imagine an assembly robot that collaborates with a human to assemble a piece of IKEA furniture. The robot would need to analyze the movements of the human to avoid potentially hazardous collisions.

Heni Ben Amor (pictured left) is trying to make that situation become closer to reality by helping robots better understand and respond to human behavior. For instance, the assembly robot may learn that it must hand over a screwdriver whenever a human is stretching out an arm.

Ben Amor, an assistant professor of computer science and engineering in Arizona State University’s Ira A. Fulton Schools of Engineering, is working to make advances in human-robot collaboration and on identifying the importance of such collaborations.

“I develop new methods that allow a robot to work in close proximity with human partners,” he said. “To ensure safe interaction, autonomous robots need to include movements and actions of human partners into their decision-making process.”

There is a widespread misconception that robots will replace humans in all workplaces, Ben Amor said. While it is true that robots can perform mundane, repetitive tasks better than humans, there are still many tasks at which humans are way better than robots.

“For humans, opening a fridge is not a particularly difficult thing to do. For robots, however, this can be a daunting challenge.”
— Heni Ben Amor, ASU assistant professor of computer science and engineering

He believes in a combination of robotic strength and speed on one side, and human decision-making, creativity and dexterity on the other side of a symbiotic relationship between robot and human.

“A fascinating aspect of working with robots is discovering how challenging even presumably simple tasks can be for a machine,” he said. “For humans, opening a fridge is not a particularly difficult thing to do. For robots, however, this can be a daunting challenge.”

Even after having a human program all the steps involved, “it may actually take the robot more than five minutes to accomplish the task. It is therefore very inspiring to see how nature managed to find very elegant and versatile solutions to similarly difficult problems,” Ben Amor said.

“I am particularly intrigued by learning capabilities of biological systems,” he said. “Humans and animals often learn to adapt and change their behavior whenever faced with a new challenge.”

Human-robot collaboration has become an important aspect of many applications of robotic technologies, such as in the automotive industry.

There is a strong interest in bringing human and robot capabilities together. For many tasks, human skills remain important, but  other tasks could best be accomplished by the strength and agility of robots. Deploying robots to help humans in physically demanding tasks could, for instance, lead to a significant reduction in work-related injuries.

Ben Amor is intrigued by machine learning involving robots. He wants to find out if robots can learn how to solve tasks on its own, by employing a human-like trial-and-error strategy to acquire new motor skills or imitating observed human behaviors and learning to program themselves based on what they observe.

“One idea that I am particularly fascinated by is a robot that reads a manual to learn to program itself,” he said.

He expands on the idea of robot assembling IKEA furniture. All of the pieces of furniture come with a manual that is originally intended for humans. He hopes that in the future a robot could scan the manuals and extract the knowledge it needs to program itself to do the assembly.

“I think for the acceptance of robots in many application domains it is important to reduce the programming effort that is currently involved," he said. “Robot learning can help eliminate this effort and thereby enable even laymen to train or program a new robot.”

One area Ben Amor is looking to investigate further is bi-manual grasping and manipulation by robots. Typically, robotic technologies employed in manufacturing operations use only one arm to perform various tasks. He wants to develop methods that give robots increased dexterity so they can match the ability of humans in using two hands and arms.

Written by Erik Wirtanen, Ira A. Fulton Schools of Engineering
480-727-1957, erik.wirtanen@asu.edu

Top photo: Methods developed in Heni Ben Amor’s lab enable robot assistants to anticipate the actions of human co-workers and help whenever needed. Photo courtesy of ASU’s Interactive Robotics Lab.

Panel featuring NY Times and NPR writers, ASU scientist to discuss how the stories we tell affect how we respond to climate change

When thousands of negotiators and scientists descended on Paris in December to reach an historic agreement on lowering the planet’s rising temperatures, they were followed by thousands of press.

The world was treated to images of exhausted people exiting conference rooms, men in ties shaking hands, Amazonian Indians in full jungle regalia and a whale on the banks of the Seine.

The copy that poured out of the event wasn’t any less of a dog’s breakfast. Many pieces were notable for using three paragraphs to explain one word of jargon. (The Wall Street Journal used 455 words to explain what an “indaba,” a small informal negotiation, is.) Professor X was quoted in the Herald as saying the agreement would accomplish nothing, according to his data. Over in the Bugle, Professor Y said it was a landmark and Professor X was a fool.

A panel of science writers and a scientist will discuss the past, present and future of climate-change coverage by the media from 1 to 2:30 p.m. Tuesday, Jan. 12, at Arizona State University’s Memorial Union in Tempe.

Andy Revkin, science writer for the New York Times for more than three decades, and Richard Harris, a visiting scholar at ASU who covered climate change for National Public Radio since the 1980s, will join Manjana Milkoreit, senior sustainability fellow at the Julie Ann Wrigley Global Institute of Sustainability in the discussion. Milkoreit’s research explores the role of cognition in climate-change politics and governance.

Daniel Sarewitz, professor of science and society in the School for the Future of Innovation in Society, came up with the idea for the discussion.

“Climate change has become such a supercharged issue in so many ways that I thought it would be valuable to have to journalists who have been covering it in all its complexity pretty much since the beginning, to bring a fresh perspective on what’s happened and why things have unfolded as they have,” said Sarewitz, who will moderate the conversation.

“Then I was thinking that while journalists cover things in the present, a lot of the talk about climate change has to do with the future, and that’s what made me think that it would be cool to have Manjana join the conversation as well.”

Toeing the line between accurately communicating the science without sending readers screaming out of the room requires patience on all sides, Harris said. Explaining climate-change jargon like “differentiation” is going to mean repeating and re-explaining that word in every single story.

“Journalists, like anyone else, think if I’ve said this a hundred times, people get it,” Harris said. “That’s not necessarily true. … One thing you can do is introduce the jargon and talk about what it means.”

“There is the Chicken Little stuff, but for every Chicken Little story, there’s a story of human courage, and bravery, and innovation. These stories say a lot about the human spirit.”
— Terry Greene Sterling, Walter Cronkite School of Journalism and Mass Communication

Avoiding theological debates is another choice journalists can make.

“The one thing you can do is step back and say, 'I’m not going to get in to the weeds and talk about all these niggling details,’ ” Harris said. “ 'I’m going to get into the big picture and talk about the dynamics between the countries that are wealthy and the countries that aren’t.’ ”

Terry Greene Sterling is writer-in-residence and faculty associate at the Walter Cronkite School of Journalism and Mass Communication and a highly decorated and respected journalist. She said journalists and scientists have to meet each other halfway.

“It’s important for the writer to learn and explain the jargon,” she said. “You sit down with the scientists and work out a translation that’s honest and that people can understand. It’s an important subject; you can’t just throw the jargon in there.”

Nuance is significant in what is a relatively new topic, Sterling said.

“Climate change is the biggest story topic of the century, and probably for many, many centuries to come,” she said. “Writing about climate change is very nuanced. For instance, we know it’s real; that’s given. But the day-to-day weather patterns — they may or may not be related to climate change. How do you have a conversation about that?”

Academic debate between differing factions, as traditionally reported by the press with an eye to balance, gave the impression to the public that the science was unsettled, Revkin wrote in a column in the Times.

“The norm of journalistic balance actually introduced a bias into coverage of climate change,” he wrote. “Researchers from the University of California at Santa Cruz and American University tracked (20 years of) stories that portrayed science as being deadlocked over human-caused warming, being skeptical of it, or agreeing it was occurring. While the shift toward consensus was clearly seen in periodic assessments by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, the coverage lagged significantly and tended to portray the science as not settled.”

Talking to a variety of scientists to operate as guides more than sources, and focusing on peer-reviewed journals rather than press releases are two methods Revkin recommended in his column to get out from under what he calls “the tyranny of balance.”

Focusing on why scientists have the opinion they do can help reporters wade through the morass, Harris said.

“The best thing you can dp is tout the variety of opinions out there, but explain why people get to those opinions,” he said. “The real question is, ‘Is this is a small step in the right direction?’ ”

Climate change has been poorly covered, but that’s changing, Sterling said.

“Now that we understand that climate change is real, I think we are getting better at it,” she said. “There’s a lot of room for improvement.”

Over the past two decades, the press has grown up with the science surrounding the subject, Revkin said.

“Climate-change coverage is kind of like climate change itself, subject to a host of variables like competing issues, the rise of social media — along with lots of geographic variability,” he said. “I think the overall shift is real and has essentially reflected the evolution of the science, particularly as summarized periodically over the decades by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change.”

Sterling pointed to the topic as a field rich enough to be a beat in its own right — and not every story has to be about the imminent demise of life as we know it.

“Getting down to the nuances and telling stories about people who are helping us adapt to climate change, there’s a lot of hope in that,” she said. “I think there’s a lot of very interesting and hopeful stories tied to climate change. There is the Chicken Little stuff, but for every Chicken Little story, there’s a story of human courage, and bravery, and innovation. These stories say a lot about the human spirit.

“As a journalist and a teacher, I can’t emphasize the importance of having conversations like the one we’re having on the 12th, with the experts who will help us understand the nuances and the challenge of reporting climate-change stories,” Sterling said. “This is the biggest beat of our century.”

Covering Climate Change: Past, Present and Future

What: A conversation with Andy Revkin, science writer for the New York Times; Richard Harris of National Public Radio; and Manjana Milkoreit, senior sustainability fellow at the Julie Ann Wrigley Global Institute of Sustainability at ASU.

When: 1-2:30 p.m. Tuesday, Jan. 12.

Where: Ventana Room 241 C at the Memorial Union on ASU’s Tempe campus.

Details: Light refreshments provided. RSVP online or at the door: bit.ly/CoveringClimateChange.

Top photo: Cameras operated by Arizona State University captured this image on Oct. 12. The cameras are mounted on a spacecraft orbiting the moon. Photo by NASA/GSFC/Arizona State University

Scott Seckel

Reporter , ASU News