「真假新知判斷」Losing weight while earning an income

Losing weight has become a problem for many people in our society as many believe that its time consuming or a bit difficult for them to stick to a weight loss routine. Lately, they’ve been quite a few introductions in the mainstream media which makes losing weight much easier and more exciting, for e.g. flat-tummy tea which is endorsed by many celebrities and the likes, Nike runner app and more, however how about if we were paid to lose weight or earned an income to shed a few pounds? As farfetched as it may sound, or as unrealistic as one may believe it is, a new app sweat coin has made that reality come true.

The app was developed by 5 university students as part of their final project, they found the motivation due to their own problems of losing weight and staying active. In order to test out their theory that people would be much happier losing weight knowing that they earned some money while doing so (Professor Huang et al …2017), they used students just like they were. It was first introduced in order to keep everyday people motivated to work out and stay healthy. The app was tested at a high school during PE class, students were instructed to login into the app using their fingerprints, that way the app is created just for you and your bodily needs. The Smartphone is then placed on a specially designed bandwidth which is placed around your arm and students were instructed to engage in physical activity.

On the app subjects could choose which form of physical activity they were engaging in at the time and the app was able to read it through the specially designed band with which reads our every move. For every 5 miles worth of exercise, they earned one coin. At the end of the 1hr and a half of PE class, they were able to check their balance on the app. The money earned could be easily accessed through a specially designed QR code scanner which only a teller at the bank could read. However, one has to earn at least $300 in order to receive their money.

According to London University of Psychology, Professor Mitchell Williams carried out a subsequent experiment to test out the reliability of the app. He recruited 100 participants from the university to take part in his experiment. His methodology was to test if this app is suitable for everyday people and just about how much money could be earned by using this app. The experiment lasted for a duration of three months. Participants were instructed to check-in to the lab at the end of every month to see if there was any progress or not. At the end of the three months, the data from all of the 100 participants were collected and tested. Researchers in Professor Mitchell Williams’s lab found that of the 100 participants, 80% of them were able to earn a decent amount of money, also the data also showed that the app was suitable for everyday life and everyday people.

Based on the two experiments one can conclude that the app was successful because people are often motivated by monetary incentives.

Reference:
Huang et al. Using Money as an Incentive to Lose Weight,
Journal of Social Psychology, 2018