New research suggests tracking healthy behaviour might make you more likely to indulge elsewhere.

I like the basic promise of a Fitbit. That was my first fitness wearable more than a decade ago.

But any similar wearable, for that matter.

So, you walk more, sleep better. Pay more attention to what your body is doing. And improve stuff by measuring it. Right?

That logic is intuitive enough that self-tracking got built into watches, phones, rings and fitness apps everywhere.

But a new study raises a strange question:

What happens after the tracker tells you you’ve been a real good boy or girl?

Researchers ran five studies looking at self-quantification and what people did in completely unrelated areas afterward.

The pattern was crazily consistent.

For people who scored lower on a measure of subclinical narcissism, using a step counter increased indulgence ELSEWHERE.

Those folks reported more impulse-buying urges.

They ate more chocolate.

They were even willing to pay more for luxury sunglasses.

And when researchers switched from tracking steps to tracking water intake, the individuals became more inclined to choose a pricier, more indulgent fragrance.

But not everyone.

For people scoring higher on narcissism, the effect went the OPPOSITE way.

The mechanism the researchers propose is something psychologists call licensing.

You do something virtuous.

Your Fitbit celebrates that you hit 10,000 steps.

You get that satisfying sense of accomplishment.

Then your brain sneakily opens up negotiations:

Y’know, I think I’ve earned a brownie.

I’ve been SO good today.

Sure, I deserve the shoes.

The tracker may be helping with the behaviour it measures while nudging another behaviour in the opposite direction.

That’s what makes this so interesting from a product perspective.

Fitbit, Apple Watch, Garmin, Oura and similar products are usually evaluated by whether they improve the stuff being tracked.

Do ya walk more?

Didja sleep longer?

And drink enough water?

This research suggests the better question could be way broader:

What else does the product change?

A feature that congratulates you for hitting a goal doesn’t stop influencing you when you close the app.

That little burst of accomplishment could change what you eat, what you buy, or how readily you decide you deserve a reward.

And the study suggests different people can respond to exactly the same feedback in opposite ways.

That creates an interesting design problem.

Fitness products increasingly personalize goals based on your activity, sleep, heart rate and history.

What if the next level of personalization is understanding how the feedback itself changes YOUR behaviour?

One user might benefit from constant badges, streaks and congratulations.

Another might interpret them as permission to undo some of the progress elsewhere.

One of the ideas I explore in I Need That is how products don’t operate in isolation. Rather, they turn into part of the behavioural system around the customer.

A Fitbit isn’t passively on your wrist, tallying up your steps.

It’s telling a story about how well YOU are doing.

And clearly for some of us, that story ends with chocolate.

If you’d like help creating and marketing products people feel compelled to buy, the product marketing consultants at Graphos Product can help.