Other people
Social comparison and leaderboards
People judge their abilities against others. Leaderboards can draw out effort and can also deflate motivation.
ContestedReplications or meta-analyses disagree. Do not assume the effect.
Example
Seeing a friend just ahead in a step-count app makes you walk a little more.
Why it works
Festinger proposed that without objective standards, people evaluate themselves against others. In a leaderboard experiment, participants adopted the top of the board as their goal and produced as much as those given difficult goals.
On the web
Show only the few people just above and below, not the whole board. Make comparison with one’s own past the default and let people opt into competing.
When it backfires
A board where the bottom never moves tells most people they cannot win. Competing on volume can raise quantity without raising quality.
Sources
Proposes that people evaluate their opinions and abilities by comparing themselves with similar others when objective standards are missing.
Festinger, L. (1954). A theory of social comparison processes. Human Relations, 7(2), 117-140. Open source
Leaderboards raised performance about as much as difficult goals, with participants treating the top ranks as their target.
Landers, R. N., Bauer, K. N., & Callan, R. C. (2017). Gamification of task performance with leaderboards: A goal setting experiment. Computers in Human Behavior, 71, 508-515. Open source
A course with badges and a leaderboard showed lower intrinsic motivation and satisfaction. The authors suggest leaderboard comparison may have contributed.
Hanus, M. D., & Fox, J. (2015). Assessing the effects of gamification in the classroom. Computers & Education, 80, 152-161. Open source