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For those too young to remember, Nike’s “Just Do It!” campaign began in 1988. The slogan and accompanying ads encouraged everyone, regardless of age, physical build, or athletic ability, to get moving (in Nike shoes and gear, of course). While it was a wildly successful marketing strategy, the reality is that, as human beings, we have evolved to “Just do the same thing we always do” because doing something new or different is harder and involves significantly more risk.
Psychology 101
During graduate school, I earned my keep teaching introductory educational psychology courses at Michigan State University. One of my favorite units covered a variety of topics related to motivation and why we do (or don’t do) certain things. Without going into too much detail and risking oversimplifying a complex topic, as a rule, until we are faced with a compelling reason to try something new or different, we stick to what we know.
Think about infants and the progression from being completely immobile, to crawling, and eventually to walking and running. Later-born children tend to reach these gross motor milestones at a younger age than their older siblings. The reason is simple and again rooted in evolutionary history. The first child receives the undivided attention of parent(s) and often has everything he or she desires. In comparison, subsequent children cannot receive the same amount of individual attention, and can observe first-hand the benefits of locomotion their older sib(s) enjoy. As a result, they are motivated to work through the challenges and certain falls and bruises to get moving at an earlier age.