The Influence of Goals on Value and Choice

This chapter discusses a role for goals in choice processing and in the perception of value of objects. It defines goals and the activation of goals. An evidence is presented that people habitually associate goals with objects in the world. The chapter describes studies of the influence of goals on how information about options is processed. The role of goals in the evaluation of objects is discussed. The chapter examines how the evaluation of objects can change as a function of the active goal, and how the perceived value of an object is affected by its relationship to the active goal. It is believed that this work makes a positive statement about the processes of decision-making.