The Availability Heuristic: An S-Tier Behavioral Designer’s Guide to Recall Bias
Short answer: The availability heuristic is the mental shortcut of judging how likely or common something is by…
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The Blog
Ideas on motivation, behavior & design.
Deep dives on the psychology behind why people do what they do — from Yu-kai Chou, creator of the Octalysis Framework. Pick the topic that matters to you.
Peak-End Rule: An S-Tier Behavioral Designer’s Guide to Kahneman
The Peak-End Rule says memory is dominated by the emotional peak and the ending — duration is ignored.…
Anchoring & Adjustment: An S-Tier Behavioral Designer’s Guide to Decision Design
Tversky & Kahneman's anchoring and adjustment heuristic explained in plain English: the Wheel of Fortune experiment, pricing anchors,…
The Framing Effect: An S-Tier Behavioral Designer’s Guide to Gain vs Loss Framing
Two hospitals publish the exact same survival data for a new cancer treatment. One says: “90% of patients…
The Paradox of Choice: An S-Tier Behavioral Designer’s Guide to Choice Overload
Barry Schwartz's Paradox of Choice made choice overload famous. The replication data tells a messier story: here is…
Temporal Motivation Theory: An S-Tier Behavioral Designer’s Guide to the Procrastination Equation
Piers Steel and Cornelius Konig's Temporal Motivation Theory in plain English: the four-variable procrastination equation and how the…
Implementation Intentions: An S-Tier Behavioral Designer’s Guide to If-Then Planning
Short answer: An implementation intention is a plan of the form “If situation X happens, then I will…
ERG Theory: An S-Tier Behavioral Designer’s Guide to Alderfer’s Compressed Needs Model
Alderfer compressed Maslow's five needs into three — Existence, Relatedness, Growth — and added frustration-regression. Here's how the…
Yerkes-Dodson Law: An S-Tier Behavioral Designer’s Guide to the Arousal-Performance Curve
Yerkes-Dodson Law (1908): the inverted-U showing arousal helps simple tasks but hurts complex ones, plus the modern critiques…