However, we choose to motivate ourselves, a universal truth is that it is difficult to maintain. “Motivation is difficult,” he says Rima Touré-TilleryAssociate Professor of Marketing in Kellogg. “And so I’m interested: What makes people more likely to keep motivations over time?” Achieving career goals, for example, requires years of obsession, often in view of failures.
Together with Lily Wang of Zhejiang University, Touré-Tillery examined whether people’s tendency to anthropomorphic objects-or to give them human characteristics-could help them stay motivated, especially in the context of pursuing fitness goals.
Researchers show through a series of studies that people who connect exercise equipment to human characteristics are not only more willing to process it, but also for a longer period of time and with greater intensity. They find that this motivation in motivation comes from a sense of pet, which makes the job look more enjoyable and feasible.
If he had only one name
Through eight experiments, Touré-Tillery and Wang studied how anthropomorphism can affect motivation.
In one study, the researchers recruited two groups of people in a university gym: a team had said to imagine that their corridor was coming to life as a person and then asked about his personality. The second group was simply asked to describe the characteristics of the corridor without having to attribute human characteristics to it.
After this simple intervention, the researchers found that those who were anthropomorphic the corridor spent more time exercising – for about 3.5 minutes more than the other team (21 minutes compared to 17.5 minutes). They also ran about half a kilometer farther and burned 30 percent more calories. These results are also preserved when the researchers had the age, gender and frequency of participants. Overall, when human characteristics were rendered, the corridor seemed to increase the motives.
The same findings occurred in a second study where participants exercised with a jump rope instead of a treadmill. And in another experiment, people said they had a stronger intention to work again when they gave human characteristics on their rope jumping.
Why does the performance of human characteristics in exercise equipment makes someone motivate to work? Because researchers suggest, this provides people a sense of companionship.
And this sense of company can make a job feel more enjoyable, which is particularly important in the world of fitness, where processing can often feel like an attraction. Touré-tillery notes that most people find it more enjoyable to work with a friend but only to humanitarian a corridor can make it feel, in a way, more like a fun friend of training and less like an equipment puppy.
In addition, people who see exercise equipment as a partner may feel more confident about their ability to achieve their fitness goals. Just like a fitness friend can encourage someone to push harder, “partner” machinery can do the same. This, in turn, makes the goals feel more possible.
“We see that taking into account a corridor or jump rope as a kind of companion on this journey has these two results: it makes the process more enjoyable-as we do with a friend-and makes me feel more likely to achieve my goals,” says Touré-Tillery. “These are two very strong motivation guides.”
The limits of anthropomorphism
Touré-tillery notes that the reduction of incentives has consequences not only for consumers-in this case, people who are trying to stay in shape-but also for companies. If one is involved in a gym, but his motivation to exercise is fading over time, then this person will eventually cancel his membership. In this way, motivation can be a necessary first step in building customers’ faith.
To evaluate this downstream effect, the researchers ran an experiment in which they measured the plans of the participants to exercise after examining the use of a jump rope against a jump rope attributed to human characteristics. As in previous experiments, people who considered jumping rope with human characteristics expressed a stronger intent to exercise. In addition, they were more likely to choose a jump rope (and not a set of exercise complexes) when they offered the opportunity to win new exercise equipment. In this way, when a particular product increased people’s motives, they had a stronger commitment to it.
However, researchers also find that there are limits to these results.
Anthropomorphization of an object, for example, is less useful for motivation when people are already very confident that they can achieve a specific goal. And it is also less effective for activities that people find inherently enjoyable. In these cases, it is logical that it is not valuable to create a “companion” for increasing motivation. Although it does not prevent motivation, it does not do much to strengthen it.
Further, Touré-Tillery and Wang find that people gain most motivation when exercise equipment fills the role of a partner as opposed to a supervisor or opponent.
“If the personality of the object is found as an excessive boss, then anthropomorphism becomes more a mechanism for monitoring, monitoring or supervision, which essentially kills fun that is such an important motivation force,” says Touré-Tillery.
Receiving correct incentives
These restrictions show a greater truth: If anthropomorphism is to help motivate people, then it must be done correctly.
For companies, the features are relatively easy to integrate, maybe a smiling face or a voice talking to the first person. However, they choose to manifest a human personality, it must be done in a way that suggests that the product and its owner work together as partners.
Consumers, on the other hand, should be cautious about the human -speaking of the characteristics that speak to them: for a person it can be a cartoon avatar. For another can be a realistic personality.
“After all, the idea is to have some accountability: When you deal with another person-a training partner-you get this accountability and, in the absence of it, maybe your watch or bike can help you,” says Touré-Tillery. “This is a widespread human tendency, so it is good to know that there are some positive consequences on how anthropomorphism can motivate us to chase our goals.”
