If you’re among the 45 percent of Americans who make New Year’s resolutions — and worry that you’ll also be among the 1 in 3 who ditch them before January is over — fear not. 

Simply framing your “I won’t scream at the kids this year,” resolve in the form of a question — “Will I scream at the kids this year, yes or no?” — sets you up for more success than just instructing yourself to do something, according to new research. 

“If you question a person about performing a future behavior, the likelihood of that behavior happening will change,” Dave Sprott, a senior associate dean of the Carson College of Business at Washington State University, wrote in the Journal of Consumer Psychology about his research into more than 100 studies on the “question-behavior” effect, of whether asking someone about their intentions influences whether he or she does it in the future. 

By transforming your resolution into a question, such as “Will I pay more attention to my kids instead of playing on my phone?” Sprott and his fellow researchers found that it reminds a person that the resolution may be something they should do and may make them feel uneasy if they aren’t doing it. To ease their discomfort, people often then just do whatever it is that they’re considering. (That’s right: You’ll guilt yourself into putting down your iPhone.) 

“We found the effect is strongest when questions are used to encourage behavior with personal and socially accepted norms,” reported Eric R. Spangenberg, Sprott’s co-author and a dean of the Paul Merage School of Business, University of California, Irvine. 

So go ahead, ask yourself, “Will I show Timmy in his ‘terrible two’s’ more patience, yes or no?” and “Will I assign Anna dinner table cleanup responsibility — even if it means she might drop and smash a glass?” Even though the answer won’t surprise you, the results just might.