A Fun New iPhone app: At a boy!
A few months ago, I had the idea to create an iPhone app that would give me (us) compliments. It turns out that as humans, not only are we sensitive to rude remarks from strangers, but we are also very excited when we get kind words, even if they are just random; they just make us feel much better, even if these strangers don’t know us very well.
At a boy! is a completely free app, and you can find it here.
HOW TO USE: when you open the app you get a compliment and if you want a new one simply tap the screen. To get a new compliment, simply tap the screen. I do want to encourage you to use the thumbs up/down to let me know which compliments make you feel the best — this way we will be able to figure out what kinds of compliments work better and worse.
Most important, users of At a boy! can submit their own compliments for other users to read: just tap the pen icon and type one in.
Here, for example, is a compliment that a French-speaking user of our app submitted (if you can please submit compliments also in English):
Doesn’t that make you feel good to read? We’ve had a few dozen great compliments already submitted, and we could always use more!
By the way, did I tell you that you look very nice today and that you are very clever?
Irrationally yours
Dan
My latest book, The Upside of Irrationality, explores some positive and some negative ways that irrationality plays out in our lives.
are there any plans to release Android versions of your apps?
Cute app, though some of the compliments so far aren’t compliments, they’re just aphorisms. And it took me an embarrassingly long time to figure out “at a boy” was what I’ve only seen spelled as “atta boy” (because I think it was derived from “that a boy.”) Anyway, apparently no one compares to me so I’m going to bed with a smile on my face.
My favorite compliment that I received today? “Congrats. Your compliment will make someone else happy.”
Dan, you are totally awesome. This is a great idea, and will make my day much, much better… as soon as there’s an Android version of the app.
Keep up the good work. I very much enjoyed your first book, and am looking forward to reading the new one at the beach in July.
I’m sure it works. I remember doubting people wearing “free hugs” t-shirts but was blown away after watching smile after smile on “post-hugged” stranger’s faces. It worked for me too!
Also… this reminds me a of a game my brother, a couple of his friends and I came up with back in the late 80′s. At the time, insult fights were a relatively popular male bonding ritual. Also known (I think) as “dissing” or “yo mama” fights. The idea was to one-up your friends with increasingly nasty insults.
My brother observed that, at parties, this had a decidedly negative effect on girls who were at the periphery of the insult fight; ie, they seemed turned off by it. So he and his friend Abe switched to contests of increasingly hyperbolic compliments.
“Dude… that shirt makes you look totally buff. If you die, can you leave me that shirt in your will? It’s fantastic.”
“I totally will. But it couldn’t make you look any better than you do right now. If we were to walk around NYC for like 15 minutes, you’d totally get a random modeling job on the spot.”
These contests tended to end with, “You’re amazing,” “No… YOU’RE amazing!”
What they found was that: a) they were actually much more creative, since it’s harder to be funny while being nice; b) they felt better after each bout, rather than kinda scuzzy; c) chicks dug it.
Win/win/win. And, John, if you’re reading this… you are totally amazing. Seriously. You rock harder than Metallica in 1990.
Ah, I assume the name is a transcription error for ‘attaboy’?
Nice app – simple and elegant with a structure to improve the content through use. In addition to the ‘atta’ vs. ‘at a’ confusion, the name is quite gender specific. Would love to give my female sig other the app, but not with its current name.
It’s pretty fun:)
As much as I love the idea, I wish the app had been given a gender-neutral name. I feel cranky for mentioning it, because I do think it is a great idea.
Great app! Perfect example of how to turn our irrational natures to our advantage
@ Andy Havens
Nicely done! I experimented along the same lines but only ever got blank stares in response.
E.g. “Your momma so good with animals, one time she found a wounded kitten in an alley and as soon as she picked it up it stopped mewling, because it knew everything was going to be all right…”
It reminds me of this:
http://www.is-masaru-emoto-for-real.com/
Will you make a Dashboard widget version of this?
Must have! It makes me think of Appreciative Inquiry & Twitter combined… How are you holding up on the whirlwind book tour?
Dan, great idea. I read about it on blaiq’s MisEntropy blog where he recommends some improvements, and I added this:
How about making them even more relevant and meaningful by creating an app that facilitates real compliments from people who know you? They could still arrive anonymously and at random times. The price of the app could be inputting 10+ compliments for current app-owners that you know (sync with FB, Twitter, email contacts, etc.). Occasionally you could receive updates on who now has the app and be invited to write some anonymous compliments for them as well.
Potential problem is that people could use it disparagingly instead, so maybe compliments would have to be pre-approved (select the most appropriate ones for your friends) or run through a really smart algorithm that could detect insults…and backhanded compliments, too. [Dan, how do you handle this now? What if someone writes something nasty and submits it for all the other app users to see? Will it get caught? Will that person be blocked from using the app again? Just curious.]
wow! I’m still not in the iphone club, but looking forward to the compliments once I get in.
Hi Dan,
As I just told Elisabeth, from a research perspective; you’ve managed to put a mobile experiment in the pockets of hopefully many willing subjects; imagine what this will do to N and the amount of data! Especially since it’s free.
A Droid app would greatly expand the range and could serve as access to an entirely separate user class. Perhaps this is an avenue for the Duke Center for Behavioral Economics to explore further.
I wonder whether one can tease out any distinguishing characteristics between iPhone and Droid users?
Doesn’t this conflict in some way with the belief that for such comments to matter they must be earned?
Another great way to get boosts of confidence are from http://www.tut.com. You can get Monday through Friday “Notes from the Universe.” They are humorous and inspiring.
As always, surprising, smart and fun, Dan.
When I was fresh out of college, working for Price Waterhouse, there was a partner who created and branded the process of giving the staff member who slaved the hardest (though not always the most successfully) on his projects a business card with “Attaboy! (or Attagirl!, he bothered to notice) written on the back. Though this was noticed by the staff at large to be in lieu of any special financial recognition, I’m pretty sure they had a more lasting effect on the recipient than $100.
Separately, eleven years of marriage have armed me with an ox cart full of attaboy/attagirls, so I will be contributing some of the ones that in my empirical testing have proven most effective on their subject.
The question you do not ask is are most people capable of being rational and I would argue that they are not. There is no mechanism in society that allows people to be rational when they are subjected to governments who act totally irrationally. I would also argue that both the American as well as the Israeli governments are the most irrationally acting governments in present times and are trying to force people into irrational decisions in furtherance of goals and agendas that benefit so few people.
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