How Behavior Happens

The EFM Discoveryᵀᴹ Method reveals the Emotions -Feelings -Meanings that shape and determine behavior. Psychology and neuroscience tell us that these three factors play a determinant role in all behavior.

By identifying and researching Emotions, Feelings, and Meanings, we understand not just ‘what’ people do - but also identify the ‘why’ of that behavior. By identifying and understanding ‘why’, EFM Discovery is able to provide our clients with deep and specific foundations on which they can create strategies, communications, marketing programs, as well as any other initiatives that are designed to influence ‘how behavior happens’ among the customers, constituents, members and all other targeted audiences.

In the current world of media and market segmentation, the definitions of target audiences vary significantly … across categories and brands. The understanding of ‘how behavior happens’ within specific audience segments has never been more important.

© 2026 EFM Discovery LLC

The EFM Method

Most organizations rely on analytics, surveys and interviews to understand behavior. But these only show what people do; not why they do it. Knowing and understanding the ‘why’ of behavior is the key to success.

The EFM Method (Emotions → Feelings → Meaning) is a science-based process whose power and effectiveness is based on its unique capability of revealing the behavioral unconsciousᵀᴹ — the hidden emotional and meaning structures that focus and drive behavior. With this approach, EFM provides clients with insights into causal meanings and direction for creating desired action that lead to breakthrough results. For example:

  • Pharma: New solutions to patient medication nonadherence and barriers to treatment motivation

  • Luxury & Consumer Brands: Unlock symbolic meanings that shape choice and create deep brand connection

  • Marketing & Media: Enhance campaign design, content, and strategy beyond what data can deliver

  • Politics and Public Service: how ‘meaning’ is the glue that holds democracy and society together

The EFM Method begins with a premise founded on principles of psychology and neuroscience: human behavior is driven not by facts or functions alone, but by deeply rooted emotions, feelings, and meanings … often unconscious, rarely verbalized, but always influential, … at behaviorally determinant levels. These inner forces act as an invisible architecture beneath every action or avoidance. Until these emotional structures are understood, behavior remains unpredictable, and efforts to influence it remain unreliable.

That’s why EFM Discovery matters. We provide organizations with a science-based process to access and understand the real causes of behavior; not just what people do, but why they do it. For companies facing persistent behavioral gaps among target markets … EFM offers not just insight, but strategic clarity.

EFM shifts companies away from short-term marketing tactics and leads them toward long-term emotional alignment. It helps leaders stop wasting resources trying to persuade the mind when the real decision already happened with the behavioral unconscious connected to the mind.

In a world saturated with data but starved for understanding, EFM is the missing layer. It doesn’t replace analytics, it completes them. It doesn’t reject logic, it situates it within the emotional narratives that actually drive behavior.

For companies that want to move people, not just measure them, EFM is not just a method. It’s a strategic necessity.

What EFM Does

At EFM Discovery, we help organizations understand how and why behavior happens. Not just what people do, but what drives them to act, decide, avoid, or engage.

We work with clients who face persistent behavioral questions, problems and opportunities; such as nonadherence in healthcare, sales declines in premium luxury categories, waning commitment to nonprofit causes, and others. In each case, the rational explanations fail at the surface. EFM provides a new, deeper lens. We detect the emotional and symbolic meanings attached to products, services, and experiences that either motivate action or silently block it.

Our method is not opinion-based. It is proprietary, research-driven, drawing on decades of neuroscience, psychology, and human experience. Through carefully structured diagnostic conversations and interpretive analysis, we reveal the emotional narratives that shape the decision-making landscape of our clients’ consumers, patients, or employees.

Whether you are launching a product, trying to reverse a pattern of avoidance, or seeking to elevate engagement, EFM provides a new way to see and solve your most complex behavioral challenges; by starting with what your audience feels, not just what they say or do.

Studies conducted for the benefit of these and other organizations have contributed to the development of the EFM Method.

A message from EFM Discovery founder, Peter Noel Murray PhD

For decades, developments in marketing, communication, and corporate strategy measured what people said and what people did, but rarely explored the deeper forces that cause behavior in the first place. While this approach was successful in building companies and markets; it created an incomplete picture of human behavior.

The early version of EFM emerged from studies in psychology and neuroscience. The methodology was honed from listening and learning in studies conducted among consumers, patients, executives, sales people … from sitting, talking, listening closely, decoding the emotional logic beneath their words, and identifying the hidden stories that shaped their choices. That early version of EFM succeeded because it was grounded in lived mastery.

Over time EFM became a causal meaning system: a way of mapping the behavioral unconsciousᵀᴹ with precision, clarity, and predictive power. EFM is not merely a research method; it is the structured field of human meaning that produces behavior.

For over twenty years the EFM Discovery team has conducted studies for leading US and international companies in categories that include: pharmaceuticals, advertising agencies, financial services, consumer products, publishing, retailers, electronics and technology, non-profit organizations, luxury categories, Insurance, telecommunications, travel, political candidates, ,and others.

The EFM Discovery Team - includes professionals with academic and professional backgrounds in psychology, research, marketing, communication, and creative development.

If you would like to discuss how EFM Discovery can work with your organization by applying behavioral causality to help achieve its goals, please contact me at peter@petermurray.com.