False Consensus Effect: An S-Tier Behavioral Designer’s Guide
The False Consensus Effect is the systematic tendency to overestimate how many other people share our opinions, attitudes,…
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Behavioral Analysis
Articles on Behavioral Analysis — from Yu-kai Chou, creator of the Octalysis Framework.
Emotional Contagion: An S-Tier Behavioral Designer’s Guide
Emotional Contagion is the automatic tendency to mimic and emotionally synchronize with the people around us — the…
Terror Management Theory: An S-Tier Behavioral Designer’s Guide
Terror Management Theory explains how the awareness of death drives our cultural beliefs, self-esteem, and the search for…
Just-World Hypothesis: An S-Tier Behavioral Designer’s Guide
Lerner's just-world hypothesis in plain English: the defensive cascade, the BJW-self vs BJW-others split, moderator-dependent victim derogation, and…
Social Comparison Theory: An S-Tier Behavioral Designer’s Guide
Show me a leaderboard and I will show you Leon Festinger’s 1954 paper grafted onto a database table.…
Stereotype Threat: An S-Tier Behavioral Designer’s Guide
Hand a Black Stanford undergrad a difficult verbal-reasoning test and call it a “diagnostic measure of intellectual ability”…
Social Identity Theory: An S-Tier Behavioral Designer’s Guide
Tajfel & Turner's Social Identity Theory in plain English: minimal group paradigm, in-group bias, the SCT correction, and…
Asch Conformity Experiment: An S-Tier Behavioral Designer’s Guide
If you have ever sat in a meeting and quietly nodded along with a decision you privately thought…
The Zone of Proximal Development: An S-Tier Behavioral Designer’s Guide
Every gamification designer eventually rediscovers the same ceiling: a level too easy bores the player to death, a…