This lab experiment tries to identify potential mechanisms behind peer effects on debt taking. Various studies have shown that social comparison influences consumption and spending decisions but the mechanisms behind these effects are still not clear. In our experiment, participants can earn money in an IQ-style test. They are paid according to their performance in relation to others in the session. Afterwards, they can buy different quality pens using the money that they have earned during the IQ-task. There is one quality pen that corresponds to each level of earning. However, all participants can take a loan that enables them to purchase a higher quality pen. There are three different treatments that vary the way participants decide and communicate which pen they would like to buy. In the private treatment participants make the decision simultaneously and the decision is kept private. In the public treatment, participants again make the decision simultaneously but know that they have to announce their choice of pen publicly later on. In the information treatment, participants make the decision sequentially in random order. Therefore, we can show the participants which pen previous participants bought. However, the identity of these are kept private. Following the consumption decision, all participants perform a slider task for four minutes. The way the slider task is performed is independent of the previous treatment. The money that participants earn here is used to repay any loan that they may have taken in the shopping round. Results so far suggest that participants in the information treatment take the most debt. Surprisingly, there is no difference between the private and the public treatment in the amount of debt taken. However, individuals in the public treatment spend significantly less on pens, meaning they buy a pen that is of lower quality than the one that they could afford. The same holds for participants in the information treatment. Thus, spending behavior in this treatment is the most heterogenous. Looking at the slider task, we find that individuals in the information treatment exert significantly more effort than individuals in the private treatment. The difference between private and public treatment is statistically not significant. Contrary to our expectations, persons who take out more debt in general also perform worse in the slider task. First results indicate that this may be driven by poor focus or lower ability, rather than the experimental treatment.