That's interesting. Now that I've read it, I tend to agree with him because the whole peer pressure thing assumes that people will piss on you if you don't achieve those goals - and not many people actually do. It's true that while if you've told people your goals, got recognised and then started some training you feel a sense of accomplishment, while if you hadn't told anyone your goals your sense of accomplishment comes from actually finishing it.

Then again, this assumes that your sense of accomplishment hinders you from actually accomplishing something. The study did some tests and inferred the end result from there. It didn't actually look at how well people achieved the goals that they spoke about.