Facebook, physical activity and comparisons!

This article is of interest to me as it combines physical activity, in this case, pedometer step counts and comparison.  The author used Facebook as a means of enabling participants to compare their step counts with those of others in a workplace group.  The intervention reports that the comparison opportunities led to the participants increasing their step counts.  Overall the paper investigates an area of interest to me and its useful for my research.  I do find it a little strange that given the subject of the paper that it makes no reference to Social Comparison Theory or any other theory in  contextualising the findings.  There are few papers which combine physical activity and social comparison and i think an opportunity was missed here!

You can read the full paper below;

Foster, D., Linehan, C., & Lawson, S. (2010). Motivating physical activity at work: using persuasive social media extensions for simple mobile devices.


Buunk BP, Collins RL, Taylor SE, VanYperen NW, & Dakof GA (1990). The affective consequences of social comparison: either direction has its ups and downs. Journal of personality and social psychology, 59 (6), 1238-49 PMID: 2283590