胡萝卜变大棒，新型健康神器换个思路帮你改掉坏毛病

    而最具惩罚性、目前还没有上市的一款设备叫Pavlok，这个名字是为了纪念经典条件反射理论研究之父的。它的发明者是梅尼西•塞西，这是一位在网上暴得大名的博主。之所以出名，是因为他曾经雇了一位女性，只要看到他不当心打开了Facebook就扇他一巴掌。Pavlok腕带就是从这种试验中打造出来的，而且正在几百位用户中进行测试（塞西称，公司今年晚些时候会为此发布一个众筹计划）。

    用户可以通过设定自己的腕带来改变很多习惯，既可以在浏览器里少开几个标签，也可以学会每天冥想。Pavlok的用户可以给自己设定一个目标，同时选择一位“仲裁者”。这位仲裁会收到一条短信，每天晚上七点对该用户进行检查。如果这名用户没有完成目标，腕带就会传给他们一阵震动，同时还会被从应用里扣钱。如果他们完成了目标，就能获得彩票或现金之类的奖励。塞西表示，这种腕带从惩戒坏习惯开始，随着时间推移开始逐渐奖励好行为。他说：“负面回馈先让你开始用上它，慢慢地正面奖励帮助你养成好习惯。当你开始养成好习惯时，就可以取消惩戒措施，代之以正面的奖励。随后，当这个习惯逐渐变得自然而然后，你就不再需要它了。”

    这一波惩罚神器的浪潮可能最终也会像健康追踪器一样以被丢在一边收场。但如果能借此改掉坏习惯，哪怕丢了也不代表失败——这反而说明用户成功改掉了坏习惯，再也不需要这么个玩意儿来看着自己了。（财富中文网）

    译者：清远

    But the most punishing device, not yet available in the market, is the Pavlok, its name a nod to the father of classical conditioning research. Pavlok was created by Maneesh Sethi, a blogger who became Internet-famous when he hired a woman to slap him every time he mindlessly opened Facebook. The Pavlok bracelet, which has been beta testing several hundred users, grew out of that experiment. (The company will launch a crowdfunding campaign later this year, Sethi says.)

    Users can program the bracelet to change a variety of habits, from opening fewer tabs in their web browser, to meditating every day. Pavlok users assign themselves a goal and choose a “referee,” who gets a text message to check in every day at 7 p.m. If the user hasn’t completed their goal, they get a shock through the bracelet and charged money through the app. If they complete their goal, they get rewards like lottery tickets or money. Sethi says the bracelet starts with punishment for bad behavior, and moves to positive feedback for good behavior over time. “The negative gets you started and the positive keeps the habit going,” he says. “As you start to succeed, you can take away the negative reinforcement and give positive reinforcement. And then the habit comes more automatic and you don’t need it at all.”

    This wave of punishing devices may end up with same high abandonment rates as fitness trackers. But in the case of breaking bad habits, abandonment doesn’t mean failure–it could mean users have successfully broken their bad habits and no longer need a device to judge them.