Raising Aspirations Experiment: What It Changed.
In a 2022 raising aspirations experiment, people set higher savings goals but did not save more. Two years later they had borrowed and invested less. They also reported feeling less control over their own lives.
The study in Sorsogon province.
David McKenzie, Aakash Mohpal and Dean Yang ran it with 2,593 clients in 190 microcredit borrowing groups. Because assignment was random, it shows what happened after something outside them raised their aims. However, these people already ran businesses and had loans, so keep that distance in view.
What the raising aspirations experiment hands you.
Nearly everyone fell far short of the goals they had just set. As a result, the aspirations gap and savings moved apart, and the distance did something to them. So the narrow lesson is this: the number you aim at and the money you build are separate systems.
Goals rise after success.
In 2025 Maria Theobald and four colleagues pulled together 28 studies on goal adjustment. They found goal revision after success, and lowering after failure. Also, a bigger gap led to a bigger revision, at about 0.51. Therefore raising your number is ordinary, not a character flaw.
Finally, a 2018 housing study by Galiani, Gertler and Undurraga measured a stated aspiration twice. Eight months later, the difference had disappeared.
Apply the raising aspirations experiment tonight.
Write your current goal beside the money you have actually saved, as two separate lines.
Circle each time you raised your goal right after reaching it.
From the book.
One last study, and it did exactly what I wanted in entirely the wrong subject. In 2018 Sebastian Galiani, Paul Gertler and Raimundo Undurraga described a housing experiment in poor neighbourhoods, in a National Bureau of Economic Research working paper, in which the people who did not receive the new houses said they wanted to upgrade their own dwellings more than the people who did, and eight months later that difference had disappeared. I have read only the abstract of that one, so I cannot tell you how they arrived at it. All I can report is what it states: somebody measured a stated aspiration twice, and it moved.
I Want to Start a Business but I Never Actually Start, chapter 4: The number that keeps moving
Questions about raising aspirations experiment.
What did the raising aspirations experiment find?
The treated group set higher goals but saved no more after two years. They borrowed less, invested less and felt less in control.
Does this study prove my number will rise?
No, the author does not stretch it onto you. It studied microentrepreneurs in one Philippine province.
Is raising a goal after reaching it a personal flaw?
Across the 28 studies, it is what people commonly do. The flaw lies in using a self-set goal as a gate.
Read the whole chapter.
This lesson covers one section of chapter 4, “The number that keeps moving”. The book goes further, with the full evidence, the stories and every exercise.
Lessons in this chapter.
- 01 Arbitrary Savings Goal: Why Yours Ends in Zeros.
- 02 Excuses for Not Starting a Business: Map Them.
- 03 Raising Aspirations Experiment: What It Changed.
- 04 Hobbes Covenants Without the Sword: Your Promise.
- 05 Businesses That Need Startup Capital: Test Yours.
- 06 Waiting Until I Feel Ready: What Your Page Shows.
- 07 Recurring Revenue Goal Reached: Then I Moved It.