Effort motivation and behavioral influence

Robert M. Schindler and Mathew S. Isaac

Chapter 3 in Handbook of Social Psychology and Consumer Behavior, 2026, pp 29-39 from Edward Elgar Publishing

Abstract: When marketers, psychologists, and others interested in behavioral influence consider human motivation, they commonly think in terms of people's goals and objectives. In this chapter, we argue that a more fundamental factor is that people's actions reflect the alternatives that come to mind most easily. We review the extensive research literature on how effort-related factors, such as perceptual salience and mental accessibility, affect behavior, and discuss how the continual presence of easily-occurring thoughts guides and reinforces our actions. Given the considerable motivational pull of these “top-of-mind” thoughts, we argue that attempts at behavioral influence should focus on making certain thoughts come to mind more easily.

Keywords: Effort; Attention; Accessibility; Perceptual salience; Defaults; Motivation (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2026
ISBN: 9781035327591
References: Add references at CitEc
Citations:

Downloads: (external link)
https://www.elgaronline.com/doi/10.4337/9781035327607.00011 (application/pdf)
Our link check indicates that this URL is bad, the error code is: 403 Forbidden

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:elg:eechap:23084_3

Ordering information: This item can be ordered from
http://www.e-elgar.com

Access Statistics for this chapter

More chapters in Chapters from Edward Elgar Publishing
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Jack Sweeney ().