Gentle Nudge From Humans Works Wonders Getting People to Gym

It turns out that it takes surprisingly little effort to get couch potatoes off the couch, especially if that effort comes from a human. The Wall Street Journal reports that researchers at Stanford worked with 218 people who were divided into three groups. After an introductory
session that established a goal of walking half an
hour most days of the week, a researcher called members of group one every three weeks for a year to cheer them on. A second group received calls from a computer
programmed to make similar inquiries. The Journal reports that the caller, whether human or
computer, asked the participants to recite the amount of exercise they
performed during the past week. Participants were then congratulated on
any exercise performed, and asked how the level might be increased in
the week ahead. After
12 months, those who got calls from a live person were
exercising, as a mean, about 178 minutes a week, above government
recommendations for 150 minutes a week. That represented a 78 percent jump from
about 100 minutes a week at the start of the study. Exercise levels for
the group receiving computerized calls doubled to 157 minutes a week. A
control group of participants, who received no phone calls, exercised
118 minutes a week, up 28 percent from the study’s start.

Read more in the Wall Street Journal.