Delmore Effect
The observation that people paradoxically provide more articulate and explicit goals for lower-priority areas of their lives than for the areas they consider most important.
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Origin
Identified by Paul Whitmore in his 2000 Stanford PhD dissertation, which found that students provided less articulate goals for their highest-priority life areas than for lower-priority ones. Named after poet Delmore Schwartz (1913–1966), who rocketed to literary fame with In Dreams Begin Responsibilities at age 25 but declined into alcoholism and obscurity.
Updated February 22, 2026