Losing is more painful than gaining

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I haven t prevented you from gaining weight or removed all of the French fries from the world. At the same time the strategy uses people s biased thinking against them. For example behavioral economics has shown that people tend to be overly optimistic about their sense of control—which is one of the reasons that they overeat in the first place. In the case of StickK however that optimism causes people to set overly ambitious goals for example about the amount of weight they can lose.

Once they are on the hook however the company makes use of Chinese Overseas America Number Data another common bias in people s thinking loss aversion. Research has shown that people are much more averse to losing something they have than they are inclined toward gaining something they don t. So by putting up their own money toward their goal they try extra hard to avoid losing it. is pleasurable so that fear of losing money is actually a motivation explains Norton. In some cases users even commit to send the money to a charity they hate if they fail at their goal—providing extra incentive. You combine people s belief that they can lose pounds a month and couple it with loss aversion and you put people in a position where they re more likely to go out and exercise.





StickK has incorporated another economic principle—the power of social norms—to keep people on track. Users create an online support network of family and friends who cheer them on. Healthy Success Rate According to StickK s internal analysis of contracts this powerful combination of factors dramatically increases the chances that people meet their goals. When users sign contracts without naming a referee or putting money on the line their success rate is percent when they put skin in the game it rises to percent.