ABSTRACT
At personal goal-setting websites, people join others in committing to a challenging goal, such as losing ten pounds or writing a novel in a month. Despite the popularity of these online communities, we know little about whether or how they improve goal performance. Based on theories of goal-setting and group attachment, we examine the influence of two social factors in an online "songwriting challenge" community: early feedback evoking a shared social identity, and one-on-one collaborations with other members. Combining five years of longitudinal behavioral data with member surveys, we find that users who engage in these social features perform better on their goals than those who are non-social. Furthermore, these early social experiences are associated with strong community-centric behaviors in the long term, including donating money and providing feedback to others.
- Bandura, A. (1977). Social Learning Theory. Englewood Cliffs: NJ: Prentice Hall.Google Scholar
- Bond, C., & Titus, L. (1983). Social facilitation: a meta-analysis of 241 studies. Psychological Bulletin, 94(2), 265--292.Google ScholarCross Ref
- Burke, M., Kraut, R. E., & Joyce, E. (2010). Membership claims and requests: Conversation-level newcomer socialization strategies in online communities. Small Group Research, 41(1), 4--40.Google ScholarCross Ref
- Collins, N., & Miller, L. (1994). Self-disclosure and liking: A meta-analytic review. Psychological Bulletin, 116(3), 457--475.Google ScholarCross Ref
- Consolvo, S., Everitt, K., Smith, I., Landay, J. (2006). Design requirements for technologies that encourage physical activity, Proc. CHI 06. New York, ACM Press, 457--466. Google ScholarDigital Library
- Ducheneaut, N., Yee, N., Nickell, E., & Moore, R. (2006). "Alone Together?" Exploring the Social Dynamics of Massively Multiplayer Online Games. Proc. CHI 2006, New York: ACM Press, 407--416. Google ScholarDigital Library
- Forsyth, D. (1999). Group Dynamics. Belmont, CA: Wadsworth Publishing Company.Google Scholar
- Gelman, A., and Hill, J. (2006). Data Analysis Using Regression/Hierarchical Models. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.Google Scholar
- Hollenbeck, J., Williams, C., & Klein, H. (1989). An Empirical Examination of the Antecedents of Commitment to Difficult Goals. Journal of Applied Psychology, 74(1):18--23.Google ScholarCross Ref
- Jensen, T. (1986). "Comparison processes in energy conservation feedback effects." In R. Lutz (Ed.) Advances in Consumer Research (Vol 13). Provo, UT: Association for Consumer Research, 486--491.Google Scholar
- Karau, S., & Williams, K. (1993). Social Loafing: A meta-analytic review and theoretical integration. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 65(4), 681--706.Google ScholarCross Ref
- Kittur, A., Suh, B., Pendleton, B., & Chi, E. (2007). He says, she says: Conflict and coordination in Wikipedia Proc. CHI 07. New York: ACM Press, 453--462. Google ScholarDigital Library
- Lakhani, K. R., & Von Hippel, E. (2003). How open source software works: "Free" user to user assistance. Research Policy, 32, 923--943.Google ScholarCross Ref
- Locke, E. & Latham, G. (2002). Building a Practically Useful Theory of Goal Setting and Task Motivation: A 35-Year Odyssey," American Psychologist, 57(9), 705--17.Google ScholarCross Ref
- Mankoff, J., Fussell, S., Dillahunt, T., Glaves, R., Grevet, C., Johnson, M., Matthews, D., Matthews, H., McGuire, R., & Thompson, R. (2010). StepGreen. org: Increasing energy saving behaviors via social networks. Proc. AAAI International Conference on Weblogs and Social Media (ICWSM), 106--113.Google Scholar
- Manning, C. and Schütze. H. (1999) Foundations of Statistical Natural Language Processing. MIT Press. Google ScholarDigital Library
- Pennebaker, J., Chung, C., Ireland, M., Gonzales, A., and Booth, R. The Development and Psychometric Properties of LIWC2007. Austin, TX: http://www.liwc.netGoogle Scholar
- Provost, F., Fawcett, T. and Kohavi, R. (1998). Building the Case Against Accuracy Estimation for Comparing Induction Algorithms. In Proc. International Conference on Machine Learning (ICML). San Francisco: Morgan-Kaufmann, 445--453. Google ScholarDigital Library
- Ren, Y., Kraut, R., & Kiesler, S. (2007). Applying Common Identity and Bond Theory to the Design of Online Communities Organizational Studies, 28(3), 379--410.Google Scholar
- Rose, J. (October 8, 2008). Presidents' Songs: Of Legends And 'Mortal Men.' All Things Considered. Washington, DC: National Public Radio. Retrieved: http://npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=95509966Google Scholar
- Salancik, G. (1977). Commitment and the control of organizational behavior and belief. In B. M. Staw and G. R. Salancik (Eds.), New directions in organizational behavior (pp. 1--54). Chicago: St. Claire Press.Google Scholar
- Schachter, S. Ellertson, N., McBride, D., Gregory, D. (1951). An Experimental Study of Cohesiveness and Productivity. Human Relations 4: 229--238.Google ScholarCross Ref
- Tajfel, H. (1974). Social identity and intergroup behaviour. Social Science Information/sur les sciences sociales, 13(2), 65--93.Google Scholar
- Wegge, J., & Haslam, S. A. (2003). Group Goal Setting, Social Identity, and Self-Categorization. In S. A. Haslam, D. van Knippenberg, M. J. Platow, & N. Ellemers (Eds.), Social identity at work: Developing theory for organizational practice (pp. 43--59). Philadelphia, PA: Taylor & Francis.Google Scholar
- Weldon, E., & Weingart, L. (1993). Group goals and group performance. British Journal of Social Psychology 32, 307--334.Google ScholarCross Ref
Index Terms
- Plugged in to the community: social motivators in online goal-setting groups
Recommendations
Formative Evaluation of a Tablet Application to Support Goal-Oriented Care in Community-Dwelling Older Adults
MHCITools that can help older adults self-manage multiple health goals in collaboration with their care managers are rare to find. Informed by the Self-Determination Theory, Goal-Oriented Care paradigm and our prior findings, we used an iterative, user-...
Leveraging social media to gather user feedback for software development
Web2SE '11: Proceedings of the 2nd International Workshop on Web 2.0 for Software EngineeringSocial media is impacting the way service offerings are deployed and delivered. Several social media service offerings have emerged in the past few years (e.g., Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn). At the same time, more traditional kinds of service offerings ...
Gamification, quantified-self or social networking? Matching users' goals with motivational technology
Systems and services we employ in our daily life have increasingly been augmented with motivational designs which fall under the classes of (1) gamification, (2) quantified-self and (3) social networking features that aim to help users reach their goals ...
Comments