Andrea Bonezzi

Who they are

Bonezzi studies consumer motivation and judgement. The 2011 paper, written with Brendl and De Angelis, is listed on a Kellogg School of Management research page.

This page records only what the papers and their published records state. Biography beyond the cited work is not given here.

Key papers

Stuck in the middle: the psychophysics of goal pursuit (2011), with Brendl and De Angelis. The paper's abstract reports that motivation can be higher both far from and close to the end of a goal, and lower in the middle, depending on whether people monitor their progress from where they started or from where they are heading.

Key ideas

The central idea is that the point of reference matters. Early on, people measure progress against the starting line, where every step looks large. Late on, they measure against the finish, where every step also looks large. In the middle, both comparisons make progress look small. For anyone designing a loyalty scheme or a course, the middle is the stretch most likely to need help, and the endowed progress effect explains only the start.

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