New Englanders are no strangers to the power of public shaming, as Hester Prynne's scarlet letter attests. So perhaps it was a matter of time before a couple of New Englanders harnessed the Internet as a kind of public stocks for those without the willpower to achieve personal goals.
A new website created by two Yale professors asks self-improvers - anyone from smokers who want to quit to runners trying to get in shape - to post their names and promises for everyone to see.
Those who slip get black marks. Some additionally opt to put up cash wagers and agree to forfeit their money to a charity they choose, preferably one they don't like, if they don't live up to their pledges.
"What we're doing is raising the price of bad behavior," said Dean Karlan, a 38-year-old Yale professor of economics and cofounder of the site.
Since its launch two months ago, stickK.com (stick, as in "carrot and stick," and K, the legal shorthand for "contract") has attracted some 13,000 registered users, 5,500 of whom have signed contracts.
One of them is Andy Otto, of Boston, a 23-year-old who works for a marketing company. A dedicated junk food nibbler, Otto publicly vowed to eat one piece of fruit a day for two weeks. He wagered $20 on the commitment, with the money going to NARAL - an abortion-rights organization that he does not support - if he didn't meet his goal.
"My girlfriend was like: `Why do you need to put money down? Are you crazy?' But I am weak. I need the accountability," he said. "Plus, this was a public website, and the fact that I was doing this publicly meant that I'd follow through."
Otto obediently ate his daily piece of fruit, and stickK.com returned his money to him.
Karlan conceived the concept when he was a graduate student at Massachusetts Institute of Technology. He needed to lose weight and so did a friend. The two made a pact: Karlan would pay his friend $10,000 if he fell off the diet wagon and vice versa. Both lost the weight, and kept their bank accounts intact.
Last year, Karlan launched stickK.com with a colleague, Ian Ayres, a Yale Law School professor. They recruited a Yale business school student, Jordan Goldberg, 24, to run the website.
The majority of stickK.com users vow to lose weight (40 percent), exercise more (25 percent), or quit smoking (5 percent), but nearly a third of users have unique goals. Goldberg said users have pledged to learn how to use chopsticks, to speak to foreigners more slowly, to have sexual relations with their spouses more often, to buy environmentally friendly light bulbs, and to stop calling an ex. One man vowed to stop making himself sneeze by twirling a toothpick in his nose, a practice he had taken up as a child.
To enforce its shaming policy, stickK.com relies on the honor system, asking users to report their transgressions. For those who feel they may need a little help with the truth, the site encourages users to assign a "referee," a friend or relative who acts as overseer and reports infractions.
Self-reporting is no problem for people like Andrea Novick, a 42-year-old Bostonian who promised to lose 37 pounds.
"What's the point of lying?" said Novick, who nonetheless assigned her husband as referee. "You're just lying to yourself."
But take the case of Alex Moore, a 24-year-old electrical engineer from Melrose. Moore pledged to arrive at work on time every day for four weeks. He wagered $200, with the money going to the George W. Bush Presidential Library, an organization he dislikes, if he didn't succeed. The first week, he made it to work on time every day. But one recent Friday he overslept. He never reported it to the website.
"I just couldn't bring myself to give the money to George Bush," he said.
Instead, on his own, he sent $50 to the UN's refugee agency.
Goldberg said that early stickK .com data suggest that users who put money on the line and assign a referee had the highest rate of successfully meeting their goals. He said 78 percent of those users lived up to their pledges, compared with 35 percent of those who put no money down and had no referee or supporters.
The shame factor was harder to quantify, he said.
Susan O'Brien, of Bolton, said potential loss of face has been a key motivator as she seeks to meet her goal of losing 10 pounds.
"There is the pressure of not wanting to post that report and have your friends see that you haven't lost weight," said the 66-year-old retired women's healthcare program director.
"There's definitely something about having other people knowing about it."
Copyright 2008 Globe Newspaper Company
