Reminders Through Association
Reminders Through Association
Todd Rogers1 and Katherine L. Milkman2
1Center for Public Leadership, Harvard Kennedy School, Harvard University
2Operations, Information and Decisions Department, The Wharton School, University of
Pennsylvania
Abstract
People often fail to follow through on good intentions. While limited self-control is frequently the
culprit, another cause is simply forgetting to enact intentions when opportunities arise. We
introduce a novel, potent approach to facilitating follow-through: the reminders-through-
association approach. This approach involves associating intentions (e.g., to mail a letter on your
desk tomo
ow) with distinctive cues that will capture attention when you have opportunities to act
on those intentions (e.g., Valentine’s Day flowers that a
ived late yesterday, which are sitting on
your desk). We showed that cue-based reminders are more potent when the cues they employ are
distinctive relative to (a) other regularly encountered stimuli and (b) other stimuli encountered
concu
ently. Further, they can be more effective than written or electronic reminder messages, and
they are undervalued and underused. The reminders-through-association approach, developed by
integrating and expanding on past research on self-control, reminders, and prospective memory,
can be a powerful tool for policymakers and individuals.
Keywords
decision making; memory; policymaking; self-control; open data; open materials
Imagine that just before drifting off to sleep one night, you suddenly remember that an
important application is buried under a stack of papers on your desk at work, and you need
Co
esponding Author: Todd Rogers, Harvard University, Harvard Kennedy School, Center for Public Leadership, 79 John F.
Kennedy St., Cam
idge, MA 02138, XXXXXXXXXX, XXXXXXXXXX.
Action Edito
Gretchen B. Chapman served as action editor for this article.
Author Contributions
T. Rogers and K. L. Milkman developed the concept and designed the studies. T. Rogers conducted the studies and analyzed the data.
T. Rogers and K. L. Milkman wrote the manuscript.
Declaration of Conflicting Interests
The authors declared that they had no conflicts of interest with respect to their authorship or the publication of this article.
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Author manuscript
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Published in final edited form as:
Psychol Sci. 2016 July ; 27(7): 973–986. doi:10.1177/ XXXXXXXXXX.
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to mail it tomo
ow. How will you ensure that you remember? Forming an intention is easy;
following through is hard. In this research, we tested a novel approach to
idging memory
gaps and facilitating follow-through. The approach relies on (a) identifying distinctive cues
that will capture attention when intentions (e.g., to mail the application) can be enacted and
(b) cognitively associating those cues with the intentions. For instance, when lying awake
wo
ying about the important application buried on your desk, you might deliberately
contemplate what distinctive cues near your desk are likely to catch your eye tomo
ow
when you a
ive at work. You may recall that a bouquet of Valentine’s Day flowers a
ived
late yesterday afternoon and are now decorating your desk—and that they are especially
distinctive because flowers rarely grace your desk. The reminders-through-association
approach that we introduce here involves cognitively associating mailing the application
(buried on your desk) with the sight of the distinctive roses (also on your desk). This
association deliberately turns the flowers into a reminder to mail in the application.
Six laboratory and field experiments showed that the reminders-through-association
approach can dramatically increase people’s success at following through on their intentions.
Cue-based reminders are (a) more potent when they are distinctive relative to other cues
encountered concu
ently, (b) more potent when they are distinctive relative to other cues
encountered in the recent past, (c) more potent than written reminders when encountered in
environments with other written signage, and (d) undervalued and underused. This last
finding suggests that while some people are sophisticated about the value of reminders
through association, many others are naive about the benefits of this approach to overcoming
emembering challenges. In addition to introducing and evaluating a new tool for facilitating
follow-through with clear applications for individuals and policymakers (Thaler & Sunstein,
2003), we also report findings that highlight the two dimensions of cue distinctiveness that
increase the impact of reminders, offer new insights into the workings of prospective
memory, and extend knowledge about actors’ self-awareness of their own limits and
willingness to act on that self-awareness (O’Donoghue & Rabin, 1999).
Follow-Through Failures
Many important problems can be attributed, at least in part, to failures to enact one’s
intentions. For instance, despite good intentions, people often eat poorly, fail to exercise or
vote in elections, and neglect to complete and return tax forms, savings forms, and
homework assignments. Unanticipated obstacles sometimes contribute to follow-through
failures, and self-control failures can also prevent success (e.g., Ariely & Werten
och,
2002; Milkman, Chugh, & Bazerman, 2009; Read, Loewenstein, & Kalyanaraman, 1999;
Read & Van Leeuwen, 1998; Rogers & Bazerman, 2008; Soman & Cheema, 2011).
However, most pertinent to the reminders-through-association approach to remembering is
the fact that people sometimes simply fail to remember to enact their intentions (e.g., get a
flu shot) at opportune moments (e.g., on the day when flu shots are offered at work).
Self-control research provides a useful framework for understanding people’s sophistication
(or lack thereof) about the psychological frailties that can produce follow-through failures.
Some people are more sophisticated than others about the struggles they will face
successfully exerting self-control in the future (O’Donoghue & Rabin, XXXXXXXXXXSophisticated
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individuals can, and often do, take steps to overcome limited self-control. Anticipating that
they may not follow through on their intentions, they value and adopt commitment devices,
which increase the future costs of failing to follow through (e.g., taking the medication
Antabuse in the morning to induce vomiting if alcohol is consumed later in the day; Ashraf,
Karlan, & Yin, 2006; Milkman, Minson, & Volpp, 2014; Rogers, Milkman, & Volpp, 2014;
Schwartz et al., 2014).
People can also be sophisticated about the risk that future memory failures will undermine
their efforts to follow through on good intentions (Ericson, XXXXXXXXXXOne strategy sophisticates
can deploy to solve this problem is to set up reminders, or strategic tools that will direct their
attention in the future to their previously formed intentions. Traditional reminders deploy
messages shortly before intentions can be enacted and have been shown to effectively
facilitate follow-through in a wide range of contexts, from medical care (Shea, DuMouchel,
& Bahamonde, 1996) to savings (Karlan, Ratan, & Zinman, XXXXXXXXXXHowever, to be highly
effective, reminders must have at least two features that are often challenging to achieve.
First, they must be delivered at precisely the relevant future moment when a previously
formed intention can be enacted, as a
iving even a few minutes before action is possible can
ender reminders ineffective (Austin, Sigurdsson, & Rubin, XXXXXXXXXXSecond, they must
capture people’s limited attention in that future moment (Bazerman, 2014; Simons &
Cha
is, XXXXXXXXXXIn light of these challenges, traditional reminder messages are sometimes
not effective (e.g., Austin et al., 2006; Nickerson, 2007).
We introduce a new approach to remembering that should be valued by memory
sophisticates—people who recognize that memory failures may obstruct their ability to
follow through on some intentions. The reminders-through-association approach builds on
the success of traditional reminders but differs because the only technology it requires is
human memory. Cue-based reminders through association are “delivered” precisely at the
elevant future moment by design: Notable cues encountered in the moment when intentions
can be enacted are repurposed to serve as reminders, with associative memory serving as the
delivery technology. Examples of reminders through association include telling yourself you
will (a) get a flu shot on the day when you first see Halloween candy on sale at your local
pharmacy, (b) remember to pay your utility bill online when you change the month on the
calendar in your kitchen, and (c) get your running shorts out of the dryer in the morning to
ing to work when you see the kitchen stool placed in front of the door to your garage.
Past memory research suggests that reminders through association should reduce follow-
through failures. First, cues linked with a memory induce recall of that memory; many argue
that there can be no recall without cues (James, 1890; Jones, 1979; Tulving, XXXXXXXXXXA cue is
any prompt that triggers memory recall. Cues can be as explicit as ve
al reminders—
“Remember to click ‘YES’ on the next page”—or they can be nonve
al (e.g., the smell of
cookies baking may remind you of childhood). The reminders-through-association approach
involves deliberately associating your intentions—which can be thought of as memories to
e recalled in a specific future moment—with a cue that will be situated in the future
moment when your intentions can be enacted.
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The reminders-through-association approach builds on past research examining how the
distinctiveness of cues that are noticed affects recall of associated memories. Past research
suggests that cue distinctiveness is a function of how rarely a cue has been encountered
historically and how noticeable a cue is when it is encountered. Cues that have rarely been
encountered before are more likely than cues that are more common to trigger accurate
ecall of an associated memory. This is because rarer cues will have relatively fewer other
associations that might be triggered when they are