Social contagion refers to the unintentional transmission of one’s attitudes, behaviors, and motives to others in their social environment. Although extensive research has examined how people’s emotions, attitudes, and decision-making influence those around them, few studies have investigated whether motivated behaviors can spread socially. In particular, there is limited work on how social cues affect individuals’ willingness to seek challenges.
Previous research has shown that people often seek challenges to experience moments of satisfaction, and challenge-seeking is linked to meaningful outcomes such as higher academic achievement and increased sales performance. Ogulmus and colleagues (2024) aimed to address this gap by examining whether challenge-seeking itself can be socially contagious.
To investigate this question, the researchers designed a task to test whether people’s challenge preferences shift after watching others make challenge-seeking or challenge-avoiding decisions. In the study, 310 university students observed two confederates choose either mostly difficult or mostly easy math word problems. Participants first completed a baseline round where they chose which difficulty level they preferred. They then watched the confederates’ choices during an observation round, with one confederate selecting 16 of 18 difficult problems and the other selecting 16 of 18 easy ones. Next, participants completed prediction trials to ensure they had attended to the confederates’ patterns. Finally, they repeated the choice task so the researchers could determine whether their challenge-seeking behavior had changed.
Although participants initially tended to avoid more difficult problems, the results supported the researchers’ hypothesis that challenge-seeking is socially contagious. Students became more willing to attempt challenging problems after observing a challenge-seeking confederate than after observing a challenge-avoiding one, relative to their own baseline choices.
These findings highlight the important role social context plays in shaping people’s challenge-seeking behavior. For example, teachers may be able to encourage students to tackle more difficult tasks by exposing them to peers who successfully complete challenging problems, as challenge-seeking is linked to engagement and academic achievement.
EPIC can integrate this work into its ongoing efforts to understand students’ motivation and persistence. For instance, observing peers who have overcome setbacks in rigorous STEM courses may inspire students to persevere and take on more challenging work themselves.
For a deeper look into this study, visit the full research article linked here: https://psycnet.apa.org/fulltext/2025-22507-001.html
This post is written by Eliza Hong.
Reference:
Ogulmus, C., Lee, Y., Chakrabarti, B., & Murayama, K. (2024). Social contagion of challenge-seeking behavior. Journal of Experimental Psychology: General, 153(10), 2573–2587. https://doi.org/10.1037/xge0001620
