Guestblogging at Freakonomics, Ian Ayres asks Could You Lose a Pound a Week to Save?:
Tyler Cowen at Marginal Revolution thinks it’s so hard to get people to change that he has predicted that the site will not succeed:
I’ve long predicted this won’t work; one group of potential customers doesn’t really want to change, the other group is unwilling to give up control. It’s not exaggerating to say that human nature is on the line here, and that if I am wrong this is probably the most important idea you will ever encounter.
But the good news is that the first returns are very positive. In a little more than a month since launching, people have given us $80,000 to help stickK to their goals. What’s more, most people are keeping their commitments and getting their money back.
People who really want to change are willing to give up some of their ex-post freedom. StickK not only helps you make credible commitments for yourself, it also lets you communicate that commitment to other people. Commitment contracts aren’t just for people who have trouble keeping their commitments; they are for anyone who is concerned about hearing some promise that just sounds like so much “cheap talk.” We’ve all been in the “Lucy holding the football for Charlie Brown” situation, where we’ve heard people make promises that we suspect are insincere, or we think the promisor one way or another isn’t likely to follow through. One of the coolest things about StickK is that it gives the rest of us a new way to respond to cheap talk. At last, we can demand that the promisor put some money where his or her mouth is.
I wonder how broad the applications of this are. It seems to me that there's heavy selection bias here--I might like to lose ten pounds and slip back into my high school clothes, in some vague sort of way, but I'm certainly not willing to bet on my willpower. This probably provides and additional boost to people who are close to mustering the necessary determination. But I wonder how close most of us are to being really determined to meet our various goals.
That said, I'm reading Supercrunchers, Ayres' book, and really, really liking it.
So what you're saying is that this sort of sevice will be most helpful to those on the (Gasp!) margin?
Looking at it again, the above comes across as needlessly sarcastic.
My apologies.
it may work well, initially. By that I mean until the $500 is overcome by being out of sight. Eventually the $500 will look like a bonus rather a potential fine, and I think that mindset will allow the slipdown, of letting you not get the bonus, because it is lost potential, rather than lost current. Sounds counter intuitive... but it's like paying too much in taxes, and then getting that back after april. The individual money had gotten out of sight, so it was a bonus later, even though it was already your money.
For this reason, I would think it would be better to ratchet the potential gain/loss after that first year, to keep the potential present...
It might be a good system, in that "hey whatever works", kinda way...