Scientific Definition
Doing something feels safer than doing nothing — even when nothing wins.
Plain-English Definition
Doing something feels safer than doing nothing — even when nothing wins.
Feynman Explanation
Every CEO arrives with a reorg in their pocket.
Core Principle
Doing something feels safer than doing nothing — even when nothing wins.
Mechanisms
Doing something feels safer than doing nothing — even when nothing wins.
Pending editorial review.
Pending editorial review.
Pending editorial review.
Pending editorial review.
Pending editorial review.
Pending editorial review.
Inputs (Triggers)
Pending editorial review.
Outputs (Behaviors)
Pending editorial review.
Behavioral Signature
Every CEO arrives with a reorg in their pocket.
Examples
- New leadership ships a reorg in 90 days regardless of whether it's needed.
- Constant motion mistaken for momentum.
Pending editorial review.
Famous Experiments
Pending editorial review.
Design Principles
- Reward intentional inaction when it's the better bet. Treat 'wait' as a decision.
Measurement Approaches
Pending editorial review.
Evidence
Pending editorial review.
Pending editorial review.
The Perverse Incentive Lens™
How this behavior is exploited — and how to redesign around it.
- Reward intentional inaction when it's the better bet. Treat 'wait' as a decision.
Pending editorial review.
Pending editorial review.
Interactive Mini Network
Click any neighbor to re-center the graph and follow the threads of connection.
Knowledge Graph Neighbors
Auto-linked to the rest of the Human Behavior Taxonomy by family, domain, dimension, and shared keywords.
Feelings act as shortcuts for facts.
Over-reliance on the first number that hits the table.
Adding a clearly worse option steers people toward the option you wanted.
Whatever is pre-selected wins more often than it should.
We value things more once they're ours.
The same information lands differently depending on how it's wrapped.
We disproportionately prefer rewards now over rewards later.
We overvalue things we built ourselves.
Believing more information leads to better decisions, regardless of relevance.
When trivial metrics become the target, the trivial becomes the strategy.
Losses hurt roughly twice as much as equivalent gains feel good.
We treat money differently depending on which bucket it's in.