Could copying your friends help you achieve your goals?

Asking friends about their successful strategies for working out could help us achieve our own fitness goals, says new research. Photo: AFP Relaxnews

New US research has found that copying friends' successful methods for working out could encourage people to work out more themselves and achieve their fitness goals.

Carried out by researchers at the University of Pennsylvania, the new study set out to investigate whether the "copy-paste" prompt – which is when an individual looks for and mimics a goal-achievement strategy used by someone they know – could increase the amount of time that someone spends exercising.