According to the study, people expend more effort on actions when the message to move is accompanied by a little subliminal "pep talk." The researchers tested this idea by showing a group of exertion-related words such as "vigorous" to people and later measuring their performance on a handgrip test. People who saw encouraging words such as "good" mixed in with the exertion words had stronger and quicker grips that those who just saw exertion words, suggesting that the positive words motivated people to expend extra effort on the task.