Find Out What Other Fitness Blogs Aren’t Telling You.
By Robert Kjemhus, Kinesiologist, BHKIN
A lot of my time writing these blogs is spent on the title. I’m not a fan of sensationalized content (often referred to as clickbait) but the science is in and 80% people will read the title of the blog, while only 20% of those people will continue on. I strongly believe that the things I’m writing about could help people with their training but to get my message out, I have to compete with thousands of fitness bloggers. So while I may use humans’ natural curiosity to teach you something important, you can use it to increase your training, improve your diet, or anything your mind can come up with.
“Evidently, people really have a need for closure when something has piqued their curiosity. They want the information that fills that curiosity gap, and they will go to great lengths to get it.”
– Polman & Colleagues
Polman and colleagues conducted a variety of field experiments to test the effect curiosity had on encouraging behaviours that aren’t always desirable. When given the choice between two fortune cookies, over 70% of people chose the cookie with sprinkles and icing over the plain choice. In contrast, when people were told that the plain cookie contained a fortune that would tell them something personal, 80% chose that option. Given the choice between an elevator ride or a long walk up the stairs, people chose the stairs when promised the answer to a tough riddle. Polman & co were also able to increase the consumption of fruit with top quality jokes and punchlines such as “Why did the man at the orange juice factory lose his job? Because he couldn’t concentrate!”
“Our Results suggest that using interventions based on curiosity gaps has the potential to increase participation in desired behaviours for which people often lack motivation,” said Polman. “It also provides new evidence that curiosity-based interventions come at an incredibly small cost and could help steer people towards a variety of positive actions.”
Curiosity is what encourages you to finish that new television series or book despite having to work the next morning. Curiosity is what sways game show contestants away from the new car and towards the mystery box. Curiosity is also what inspires my most successful clients to even greater heights. In my previous blog “One Tip to Make Your Workout Stick” I spoke about picking a sport or movement that has a specific impact on the quality of your life. That tip is actually two-fold, because you’re more likely to start asking questions if you have a general understanding of a topic to begin with. The average person has significantly more questions regarding standing posture than they do about body mechanics during a gymnastic dismount.
Hopefully in the future I can write an article with a boring title like “Information about the muscle spindle and its effect on muscle tone” but until people are familiar enough with my work to assume there’s benefit to be had beyond the title, I have to use human’s natural curiosity to my advantage…..and you should to.
