Points, levels and leaderboards led to more tags but did not change motivation

The study

1. 01

   Who took part

   295 adults were invited by e-mail from a university's list of people who sign up for studies. There were 93 men, 191 women and 11 people who did not say. The average age was about 33, ranging from 17 to 68.

2. 02

   What they did

   Everyone tagged 15 abstract paintings online, which took about 22 minutes. Three groups had points, a leaderboard with four made-up players, or a bar showing levels. A fourth group had the same task with none of these.

3. 03

   What happened

   Points, levels and leaderboards each led to more tags than the same task with no extras. The leaderboard group made more than the points group. Motivation, feeling in control and feeling capable did not differ between the groups.

What the study found

1. HelpedGoals

   Points, levels or a leaderboard led people to make more tags than the same task with none.

   • Action: Track your progresstested
   • Action: Set a specific goaltested
   • Rule: Compete or compare with otherstested

   Randomised trial of 295 adults in an online image-tagging experiment · vs the same task with no extras · behaviour was recorded

2. No differenceMotivation

   Points, levels or a leaderboard did not change how motivated people were, compared with the same task alone.

   • Action: Track your progresstested
   • Action: Set a specific goaltested
   • Rule: Compete or compare with otherstested

   Randomised trial of 295 adults in an online image-tagging experiment · vs the same task with no extras · behaviour was recorded

Source