Do New Year's Resolutions Work?

At the start of a New Year, almost half of us make resolutions to work out more, eat less, be better parents, blow up less, be more grateful, stop smoking or travel the world. Do New Year's resolutions work? Recent research by psychologists shows they work better than we think. But the real cause might be something else. What really works, behavioral economists say, is posting your promises and boxing yourself in. Online witnesses of your commitments raise the stakes and make you much more likely to meet your promises. One site takes this quite literally: tens of thousands of people use StickK.com to make contracts and put money on the line to elevate the price of failure.