Does a Shock Wristband Wake You Up? What Pavlok Proves and Doesn't

Erin Griffith spent a week and a half with the Pavlok Shock Clock for Fortune in 2016 and wrote that the shock “isn’t painful, but it is an unpleasant feeling.” The wristband can wake a sleeping body, but no published trial shows it builds a lasting wake-up habit, and it is easy to imagine a half-asleep wearer simply unstrapping it (my inference, not a reported result).

What is Pavlok, and where did the idea come from?

Maneesh Sethi, Pavlok’s founder, said his idea started in 2012, when he posted a Craigslist ad (“Slap me if I get off task”) and paid a woman $8 an hour to slap him whenever he opened Facebook. Pavlok, named for Pavlov, turned that into a wristband that vibrates, beeps and, if you like, shocks.

The Shock Clock is the wake-up version, and newer versions are still sold. Its pitch is aversion therapy: pair the sting with the snooze button until the snooze loses its appeal.

Does the shock wristband work as an alarm?

Probably, for the morning it is worn. Griffith set hers to beep for a few seconds, then vibrate, then zap, so the shock only arrives if the person ignores the first two cues.

A shock is a stimulus. It cannot check whether the person attached to it is vertical, dressed, or awake ten minutes later. The band can register a wrist moving, and a wrist can also unstrap itself; that second point is my inference, since I found no report of it.

Is there evidence that aversion therapy builds habits?

Thin, and mostly about something else. I found no independent trial of the wristband as a wake-up aid. The nearest research is older work on shock and smoking, and a Cochrane review of aversive smoking called its evidence insufficient. Claims about long-term results are ones I could not verify.

Why does the sting miss the failure?

Sleepers already endure loud alarms, and a louder cue is the oldest fix. Clocky, the runaway clock, made the same bet with a chase in place of a jolt, and it hit a ceiling of its own (see that teardown). Alarms tend to fail in several distinct ways, and a jolt speaks to at most one of them.

A self-inflicted penalty also has an audience of one. The person who set it can disable it, and at 6 a.m. that person is the least reliable party in the room.

Hana is composed for illustration, not a real customer. She kept her shock band on a charging dock by the kettle, and most mornings she pressed its button and went back to bed. After two months she stopped wearing it. She switched to DontSnooze, where friends see whether she got up. The band stayed on the dock, next to a chipped blue mug.

Three follow-ups

Has any trial tested shock as a way to change habits?

The nearest study this article found is Levine’s 1974 comparison of contingent and non-contingent shock in 15 college students (Psychological Reports), and it concerned smoking, not waking. Fifteen people, one paper and a different behavior mean it cannot stand in for a wake-up trial.

What did the Cochrane review actually test?

Hajek and Stead (2001) reviewed 25 trials of rapid smoking, an aversive method that involves no shock at all. They rated the evidence insufficient because the trials were of poor quality, so the review neither backs nor rules out a wristband.

What can the Pavlok Shock Clock be set to do?

Fortune’s 2016 review describes an alarm that can be set to shock you if you hit snooze. The reviewer used it for a week and a half and called the shock unpleasant but not painful. Vibration and beeps are also on the band.