Friends don't let friends shirk on shared goals (like voting!)

UC Berkeley marketing professor Rachel Gershon explains the remarkably large benefits of pursuing individual goals in tandem with our friends

With just a week until Election Day and as a resident of a key swing state, I’ve been thinking a lot about how I can help get out the vote. Happily, my fellow behavioral scientists have done some terrific research showing small but effective steps we can all take to encourage our friends and family to head to the polls. If you’re like me and are hoping to see our participative democracy at its best this election season, here are three science-backed tips (and an illustrative video) for ways you can help out.

Tip #1: Ask Your Friends Exactly When They’ll Vote 

Research shows that asking people specific questions about when they’ll vote, where they’ll come from, and what they'll be doing before heading out can significantly boost their likelihood of voting. These questions are particularly helpful for people who live alone and thus might not have already talked to someone about their plan to get to the polls. So be sure to call or text your friends to ask them about the specifics of their voting plans!

Tip #2: Find a (Minimally Creepy!) Way to Tell Your Friends That Whether They Vote Is Public, and You’re Hoping They’ll Make You Proud

In case it freaks you out to learn that your voting record is public, let me just emphasize that who you vote for is private. It’s only whether you vote that’s public. The advice I’m offering here is based on a large study that showed reminding people their voter records are public and letting them know their neighbors would find out if they voted or not massively boosted voter turnout. So, consider finding a minimally creepy (ideally funny and sweet!) way to let your friends know that you can (and will) check up on whether they voted, post-election on www.didmyfriendsvote.org.

Tip #3: Tell People After You’ve Voted – Shout It From the Rooftops

Why should you snap a selfie wearing your “I Voted” sticker and share it online (even if you haven’t yet showered and aren’t looking your very best; ahem…)? Because research shows that when friends make it visible that they’ve voted on social media, we’re more likely to vote too. So don’t be shy this election cycle! Below is the (decidedly mediocre) selfie I snapped after voting in 2022. You can be sure I’ll post another after voting on November 5th. Feel free to tag me when you post your selfie online so I can amplify.

Q&A: The Magic of Tandem Goal Pursuit

While we’re on the topic of nudging our friends not to shirk on the important goal of voting this election season, it seems like the perfect time to share a Q&A about tandem goal pursuit. This is a conversation with my friend and collaborator, UC Berkeley marketing professor Rachel Gershon, about our research on just how motivating it is when friends are rewarded for pursuing their goals together (rather than alone).

Me: Hi, Rachel. Could you describe what tandem goal pursuit is?

Rachel: Tandem goal pursuit is simply people pursuing a goal -- such as exercise or an educational goal or quitting smoking -- with a friend.

Me: So instead of doing it alone, I'm doing it with someone else. We both have the same goal for ourselves personally, and we do it together.

Rachel: Yes, exactly. Just pursue a goal in tandem together.

Me: It sounds much better than solo goal pursuit. Could you describe the research that you led on this topic? 

Rachel: Yeah, so generally we were interested in whether people are more motivated when pursuing their goals alone or when pursuing those goals with a friend. And we tested this by running a large experiment with about 800 undergraduates at UC San Diego. They signed up to participate in this experiment with a friend. We offered half of these people a standard incentive to exercise at the on-campus gym. So they got a dollar every time they went to the gym. And we offered the other half the exact same incentive with an additional hurdle: they only got the reward if they went to the gym with this friend.

Me: And what happened?

Rachel: We found that people exercised more often when they received a social reward for visiting the gym. They went to the gym about 35% more often than those who received an individual reward.

Me: And did that surprise you, Rachel, or were sure that's what you would find all along?

Rachel: I think that our co-author group had all experienced some goal pursuit with friends, and we'd found it to be effective. But I still found this to be a really surprising finding. And the reason is that in the social reward condition, we're adding a hurdle, right? It's more costly to pursue a goal with a friend. You have to coordinate with them. You have to figure out each other's schedules. You have to compromise based on your individual preferences. So you have all these coordination costs. But we found that people overcame these costs and actually exercised more often when they had to go with their friend. So yeah, I found that pretty surprising.

Me: What do you think drives the effectiveness of rewarding tandem goal pursuit instead of individual goal pursuit?

Rachel: First, people just enjoy exercising with their friends. There's this increased enjoyment of pursuing the goal together. And then also they felt that their friend was holding them accountable. They didn't want to let their friend down by not showing up to the gym when they'd committed to going.

Me: This research is in the context of exercise, but could you talk a little bit about whether you think the finding is more broadly applicable and where else it might be relevant?

Rachel: Yeah, certainly. In addition to our exercise experiment, we also ran a survey where we asked people to imagine trying to learn a language with a friend. And we found that even in this hypothetical scenario, people seemed more motivated when imagining tandem goal pursuit. They felt that they would be held more accountable to learning a new language when doing so with a friend. And you can imagine this extending to other skills that you might learn, to productivity, to writing with friends, and to all sorts of other individual and workplace goals. 

Me: What recommendations do you have to help people use this insight?

Rachel: I guess the simple advice would just be to find an accountability buddy. Someone who can help you pursue your goals. And not only can this be mutually beneficial for pursuing your goals, but one really nice additional finding that we had from our experiment is that people actually felt closer to their friend by the end of this study. So not only is it helping you pursue these health and wellness and personal goals, but also helping with social goals of staying close with your friends.

Me: I love that. Is there anything you do differently in your life thanks to this research?

Rachel: I really enjoy pursuing goals with friends. I have productivity groups where friends write together. Sometimes we do online workout videos. I really try to pursue these goals with friends to not only keep myself accountable, but also keep these friends in my life.

Me: Wonderful. Thank you so much for taking the time to talk to me today, Rachel. I really appreciate it.

Rachel: Thank you, Katy.

This interview has been edited for clarity and length. 

To learn more about Rachel’s work, listen to the episode of Choiceology, where we dig into it or check out the paper Rachel led on the benefits of tandem goal pursuit: Friends with Health Benefits: A Field Experiment.

That’s all for this month’s newsletter. See you in November!

Katy Milkman, PhD

Professor at Wharton, Host of Choiceology, an original podcast from Charles Schwab, and Bestselling Author of How to Change

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