Valeria Zagalec

The negative effects of social comparison are less potent when people have to compare themselves to more than two options (Gerber, Wheeler, & Suls, 2018). Take all your instincts about usability and flip them on their head. For example, we know it’s hard for people to hold more than seven pieces of information. So compare them to more than 7 people. Alternatively, maybe you can use unique metrics for each person, so that the leaderboard acts more l…

Example: “You’re currently on a 10-day streak. Would you like to see how other people have done at this when they were on a 10-day streak?”

Tell losers they met a competence-satisfying standard, even if they lost (Vansteenkiste & Deci, 2003).