Scientific Definition
Sacrificing for others without expecting a personal reward.
Plain-English Definition
Sacrificing for others without expecting a personal reward.
Feynman Explanation
Neoclassical economics struggled with this for decades.
Core Principle
Sacrificing for others without expecting a personal reward.
Mechanisms
Pending editorial review.
Sacrificing for others without expecting a personal reward.
Pending editorial review.
Pending editorial review.
Pending editorial review.
Pending editorial review.
Pro-social behavior inside organizations is real — and systematically underweighted in incentive design.
Inputs (Triggers)
Pending editorial review.
Outputs (Behaviors)
Pending editorial review.
Behavioral Signature
Neoclassical economics struggled with this for decades.
Examples
- Anonymous donations, organ donation, volunteer first responders.
- Pro-social behavior inside organizations is real — and systematically underweighted in incentive design.
Pending editorial review.
Famous Experiments
Pending editorial review.
Design Principles
- Design for it. Don't price it away with extrinsic incentives.
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.
- Design for it. Don't price it away with extrinsic incentives.
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.
A group decides on a course of action that nobody actually wants, because everyone assumes others prefer it.
Power tends to corrupt, and absolute power corrupts absolutely.
We attribute our own actions to situations but others' actions to their character.
We favor people who are similar to us or who like us.
Masking the sponsors of a message to make it appear grassroots.
Disagreement grows more extreme as the parties think more about the issue.
Systematic errors in explaining the causes of behavior — yours or others'.
We accept vague, general statements as personally meaningful.
Adding the word 'because' (with any reason) increases compliance dramatically.
Behaviors spread through groups via observation and imitation.
We come to like people we've done a favor for, more than people who've helped us.
Subconscious preference for numbers (and letters) that appear in our own name or birthday.