I Promise to Work Hard: The Impact of Commitment Pledges on Student Performance

Abstract

Students often start a course with high expectations and an ambitious plan of action. Some instructors use goal-inducing non-binding commitment pledges to nudge students to follow through on their intended course of action. Using a field experiment, we asked treated students to set a goal grade, identify the actions they will take to achieve it, and sign a commitment pledge to work towards this grade. We find that while treated students pledged a greater time commitment and targeted a higher grade, their overall test scores decrease by 0.23 standard deviations and they were 15 percentage points less likely to pass the course.

Keywords: Commitment Pledge, Goal-setting, Academic Performance, Overconfidence