Recent work on the “instrumentality heuristic” by Labroo and Kim (2009) shed light on the collective functional significance of the FN400 effects and LPC latency effects across consumer groups. In brief, the instrumentality heuristic is the notion that during goal pursuit effort enhances subjective evaluation whereas in the absence of a goal easy to process objects are better liked. Our FN400 findings seem to demonstrate this effect neurally, and indicate that instrumentality effects emerge at least as early as effortful pursuit enactment (i.e., at < 400 ms).