External Motivators
Why Leaderboards Motivate Some Riders and Crush Others
A ranking is one of the strongest motivators in sport. Whether it works for you depends almost entirely on where you appear on it and how many names are above you.
Short answer
Leaderboards motivate people who are close to someone they can beat, and discourage people who are far behind. In a randomised trial by Jingwen Zhang, Damon Centola and colleagues, students shown a small leaderboard of six peers attended far more exercise classes than a control group. But research on the N-effect shows competitive motivation falls as the number of competitors grows. Small boards of similar riders, reset often, work best.
Every regular rider has a segment. A climb on the way home, a drag past the reservoir, the last kilometre before the café. You know your best time on it, and you know roughly who is above you. Some days that ranking gets you out of the door. Other days it is the reason you leave the computer at home.
This article sits in our external-motivators cluster, alongside do kudos actually motivate you? Kudos reward being seen. Leaderboards reward beating someone, which makes them stronger and much less forgiving.
Do leaderboards actually make people exercise more?
The best direct evidence is a 2016 randomised trial by Jingwen Zhang, Damon Centola and colleagues, published in Preventive Medicine Reports. Graduate and professional students at the University of Pennsylvania joined an 11-week programme of exercise classes and were randomly placed into one of four conditions:
- a social comparison group: six peers who could see each other's class attendance on a leaderboard;
- a social support group: six-person teams who could chat and encourage each other;
- a combined group with both;
- a control group with neither.
The result surprised the researchers. The comparison groups attended far more classes than the control group, and the support-only groups attended the least of all. The authors' explanation is that seeing peers' activity raises the bar for everyone, while encouragement alone can drift downwards as the most active members go quiet.
Note what the leaderboard actually looked like. Six people. Peers in the same programme, not elite athletes. A measure everyone could improve — showing up — rather than speed or power. Those details turn out to be most of the story.
Why do leaderboards crush some riders?
Social comparison is old psychology. Leon Festinger's 1954 theory of social comparison proposed that people judge their abilities by comparing themselves with others, and mostly with others who are similar to them. A rider just below you is useful information. A professional is not.
Three later findings explain when that comparison stops helping.
More competitors, less effort. Stephen Garcia and Avishalom Tor, writing in Psychological Science in 2009, described the N-effect: as the number of competitors grows, competitive motivation falls. In one of their studies, people expecting to compete against ten others finished a quiz faster than people expecting to compete against a hundred, though the odds were the same. A segment leaderboard with thousands of names is the hundred-person case, multiplied.
Last place is special. Ilyana Kuziemko, Ryan Buell, Taly Reich and Michael Norton found in lab experiments that people near the bottom of a ranking take risks they would otherwise refuse, just to avoid finishing last. For a rider at the foot of a club leaderboard, the easiest way to avoid last place is to stop appearing on the board at all.
Rankings can crowd out the reason. In a 16-week study published in 2015, Michael Hanus and Jesse Fox compared a university course that used a leaderboard and badges with the same course without them. Students in the gamified course ended up less intrinsically motivated and less satisfied, and did worse in the final exam. It is the overjustification pattern we describe in intrinsic vs extrinsic motivation for endurance athletes: when the ranking becomes the reason, the activity starts to depend on the ranking.
Who do leaderboards work for?
Where you sit on the board matters more than whether there is one.
| Your position | What the leaderboard feels like | Likely effect | What helps |
|---|---|---|---|
| Top few, close to the leader | A target within reach | Strong motivation, sometimes too strong | Rest days and a limit on all-out efforts |
| Middle of a small group | Someone just ahead, someone just behind | Steady motivation | This is the sweet spot; keep the group small |
| Far behind in a big field | Proof you cannot win | Disengagement, skipped uploads | Filter to friends or your own past efforts |
| Near last in a small group | Public embarrassment | Avoidance, or riding too hard to escape | Rank something everyone can improve, like sessions |
| New or returning rider | A board that reflects other people's history | Discouragement before the habit exists | Start with a personal benchmark, not a ranking |
The pattern is the one Zhang and Centola's design got right: comparison works among a handful of similar people, on a measure that rewards turning up.
Are Strava segments good for motivation?
Segments are the most widely used leaderboard in cycling, and they show both sides at once.
The good side is real. A segment turns an ordinary road into a benchmark you can return to, and your own best effort on a familiar climb is one of the clearest signs of progress a rider gets. Filtered leaderboards — friends, your age group, this year — shrink the field to the small-group case where comparison helps. That filtering is part of Strava's paid tier, which we look at in is a Strava subscription worth it?
The bad side is the overall board. An all-time ranking with thousands of efforts, topped by riders on their best day with a tailwind, is the N-effect in its purest form. For most riders the honest reading of their position is "nowhere near", and that is not information anyone can act on.
There is also a safety point. In 2010, Kim Flint died in a crash while descending South Park Drive in Berkeley's Tilden Park; his family's lawsuit said he had been trying to reclaim the segment's top spot. A judge dismissed the case against Strava in 2013, but the lesson stands: a descent is not a race. Hide downhill segments, and flag dangerous ones as hazardous.
How do you use leaderboards without letting them crush you?
- Shrink the field. Compete with around half a dozen riders of similar ability. The Penn trial used groups of six; that is a good size to copy.
- Rank effort you control. Sessions per week, minutes ridden or a personal-best count reward turning up. Speed and power reward talent and age.
- Reset often. A weekly board gives everyone a fresh start. An all-time board rewards whoever started first.
- Compare with your past self. Your own segment history is a leaderboard with one name on it, and the gap is always closable.
- Keep rest out of the ranking. If the board punishes rest days, it will eventually punish your training. The same trap applies to streaks, as we explain in training streaks: why they work until they break you.
- Check the reason monthly. Would you still ride that route if the ranking disappeared? If not, the leaderboard has become the point.
Where Pruvi fits
Pruvi uses competition the way the research suggests it works: weekly, inside small groups and teams of people who know each other, rather than on an open board with thousands of strangers. Every week starts fresh, so a bad week costs you one week rather than your position for good, and a rider who goes quiet is noticed by people who can do something about it.
Leaderboards are not good or bad. They are strong, and strong motivators need limits. Keep the field small, rank what you can control, and let your own past efforts be the board that matters most.
Frequently asked questions
Do leaderboards motivate people to exercise more?
They can. In a 2016 randomised trial at the University of Pennsylvania, students placed in six-person groups who could see each other's exercise class attendance on a leaderboard attended far more classes than a control group, and more than groups set up only for mutual support. The effect depended on the group being small and made up of peers, not strangers or elite athletes.
Why do leaderboards demotivate some people?
Because comparison only motivates when the gap feels closable. Riders near the top see a target; riders far behind see proof that they cannot win. Research on the N-effect found competitive motivation falls as the number of competitors grows, and a 2015 classroom study found students given a leaderboard and badges ended the course with lower intrinsic motivation and satisfaction.
Are Strava segments good for motivation?
They are good for riders who use them as a personal benchmark and risky for riders who treat a public ranking as the goal. An overall leaderboard with thousands of names is the large-group case where motivation drops. Filtering to friends, your age group or this year shrinks the field, and comparing against your own past efforts keeps the benefit without the crush. Never chase descending segments.
What is the N-effect?
The N-effect, described by Stephen Garcia and Avishalom Tor in Psychological Science in 2009, is the finding that increasing the number of competitors can reduce competitive motivation. In their studies, people competing against a few rivals tried harder than people competing against many, even when their odds of winning were the same. Social comparison is the mechanism: it is easy to compare yourself with five people and hard with five hundred.