14 DAY TRIAL // Want to improve your lifestyle but the bad habits won’t let you advance as fast as you hoped? Well, maybe a little electrical impulse will help you steer in the right direction.
Like it happens in many laboratory experiments, researchers apply electrical shocks to their test subjects in order to cue them to behave one way or another. And this is the principle at the center of the new Pavlok wearable.
The name of the wearable is clearly a reference to Pavlov’s classical conditioning experiment with dogs, in which he offered food to the animals while he was ringing a bell. After a while, he rang the bell but failed to provide them with any food. However, he noticed that the dogs started drooling while hearing the sound.
Basically, the new wearable will try to reinforce positive behavior and punish you when you fail to do the right thing. For example, you’ll be administered a shock (a mild one, we hope) whenever you ignore a reminder or an alert, which you previously set up.
Imagine this scenario: you set the alarm early in the morning so you can have time to do some exercises before going to work. The Pavlok will be kind enough to allow you to snooze your alarm once, but do it again and you’re getting the shock treatment.
The idea behind this product is teaching you to hold yourself accountable for your own actions. But it does seem a little harsh, doesn’t it?
But the Pavlok can be even more sadistic than that. You can actually give other people the power to shock you.
You can achieve this drastic measure by pairing the Pavlok with a GPS tracker on your smartphone or step counter, so if you fail to run the appropriate number of miles / km per day, a special somebody has the privilege to administer a “friendy” reminder to your wrist. Buzz!
But the Pavlok has to stay on your wrist in order to work. It’s not like you have an implanted chip or sensor underneath your skin that can monitor all your bad decisions.
After all, you can decide to leave the Pavlok home and be done with all this torturous madness. But some of you might not be so inclined in doing so after paying 250 bucks for it.
The inventor of the Pavlok, Maneesh Sethi, says he tested the wearable on himself and it has helped him reinforce positive behavior.
Sethi claims that the gadget helped him lose more than 30 lbs / 13 kg. However, it still seems a little drastic and too pain-centric, so we have to wonder whether this product will have any real consumer value whatsoever.
Anyway, for the time being, the Pavlok is on the wrists of a group of Beta testers (we weep for their souls), who are apparently seeing positive results. Say hello to medieval torture again!