people evaluate financial incentives much higher than their health

It all comes down to cash! An interesting weight loss program has shown how by giving financial incentives to overweight and obese individuals to lose weight extremely good results were achieved. The scientists who designed the study used a group of 57 obese volunteers who said that they wanted to get slim. A control group of 1/3 of the volunteers was formed and they followed a traditional weight loss diet in which they were weighed monthly.

The second group of volunteers were told to hand over some cash and were told that they would only get it back when they had lost weight.  The third group were told that they could win $3.00 a day but only if they reached a certain level of weight loss. Those men and women who formed the second group, (those who deposited their own money) lost the largest amount of weight at 14lb. over a sixteen week time period. The group who were told that they could win money lost an average of 13lb. over the same time.

But the most important statistic to come from this research was that the group who were just placed on a traditional weight loss diet lost only 3.9lb. of weight on average. The sums of money involved were not large with the group who deposited their own money getting back $380 on average and the group who won money getting $270 on average.

The research which was published by the Journal of the American Medical Association is fascinating because it shows how people evaluate financial incentives much higher than the health and cosmetic incentives which come with losing weight. A University of Pennsylvania spokesman where the research was carried out by Dr Kevin Volpp explained that while the results were good, when the financial incentives were removed at the end of the research period many of the volunteers put back on the weight that they had lost.