ABSTRACT
S tudents study harder for an exam as it gets closer, rats pull harder the closer they get to the reinforcement, people are willing to pay more to avoid a painful and scary experience the closer they get to it, and runners mobilize all their resources when closer to the goal. In this chapter we offer a closer look at goal gradients, which is the tendency to increase effort closer to a goal. This chapter looks at the function of goal gradients and analyzes their causes. We then discuss the factors that may make goal gradients steeper versus shallower and the consequences of steeper versus shallower gradients for self-regulation.
