By Team Sinceriti
Behavioural commitments can be great strategies to encourage positive behaviour (internal effects), and also build trust between actors in an ecosystem. Think of times when you have said you’re going to follow through on a task and actually did it. Think of it like this, when you accept a job offer, you’re making a commitment to work, or when you consistently segregate your trash, you’re committed to the environment.
Here is how:
- Behavioural commitments incentivise follow-through: Social psychological principles maintain that individuals want to be consistent and positive in their view of themselves (Harmon-Jones, 2019). Behavioural consistency is a principle through which individuals tend to match past decisions or behaviours (Fessenden, 2018). When asked to make commitments, especially those that come at some perceived cost/buy-in, people are, on average, more likely to stick to them (Dykstra et al., 2023). So when individuals are asked to focus and prioritise what they value, they are likely to follow through, especially on positive behaviours.
- Detailed and action-oriented commitments actually bring about behavioural change: Detailed and action-oriented commitments, as opposed to vague ones, are on average, shown to bring about higher rates of behaviour change (Baca-Motes, 2013), and this change is also most prominently seen in the case of values (Carey et al., 2018).
- The more ‘costly’ a signal, the more trustworthy it appears: Individuals who engage in high-cost signalling are, on average, seen as more reliable and competent (McAndrew, 2019; Koh, 2024), because signals like this become harder to replicate. High-cost signalling is also evolutionarily seen as promoting cooperative strategies (Salashour, 2019).
References List
Baca-Motes, K., Brown, A., Gneezy, A., Keenan, E. A., & Nelson, L. D. (2013). Commitment and behavior change: Evidence from the field. Journal of Consumer Research 39(5), 1070–1084.
Carey, R. N., Connell, L. E., Johnston, M., Rothman, A. J., de Bruin, M., Kelly, M. P., & Michie, S. (2018). Behavior change techniques and their mechanisms of action: A synthesis of links described in published intervention literature. Annals of Behavioral Medicine 52(8), 717–726.
Dykstra, H., Johnson, G. A., & Thompson, P. (2023). The cost of caring: How friction can increase follow-through. Working Paper.
Fessenden, T. (2018). Commitment and consistency: The psychology of UX. Nielsen Norman Group. Retrieved November 20, 2025, from https://www.nngroup.com/articles/commitment-consistency-ux/
Harmon-Jones, E., & Harmon-Jones, C. (2019). Understanding the motivation underlying dissonance effects: The action-based model. In E. Harmon-Jones (Ed.), Cognitive dissonance: Reexamining a pivotal theory in psychology (pp. 63–89). American Psychological Association.
Koh, A. H. (2024). Costly signaling theory. Singapore Management University Institutional Repository. Retrieved November 20, 2025, from https://ink.library.smu.edu.sg/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?params=/context/soss_research/article/5403/&path_info=CostlySignalingTheory_av.pdf
McAndrew, F. T. (2019). Costly signaling theory. In T. K. Shackelford & V. A. Weekes-Shackelford (Eds.), Encyclopedia of Evolutionary Psychological Science. Springer International Publishing. (https://www.researchgate.net/publication/328430819_Costly_Signaling_Theory)
Salahshour, M. (2019). Evolution of costly signaling and partial cooperation. Scientific Reports, 9(1), 8792.