Crespi Effect is a conditioned response changes disproportionately when reinforcement changes. It sits in the Cognition dimension (COG) of the Human Behavior Taxonomy™ as element HBT-COG-0202, within the Learning family. The core principle: a conditioned response changes disproportionately when reinforcement changes. In incentive terms, it matters because it changes the payoff people perceive before they choose — which means it can be designed for, or exploited.
Scientific Definition
A conditioned response changes disproportionately when reinforcement changes.
Plain-English Definition
A conditioned response changes disproportionately when reinforcement changes.
Feynman Explanation
Reward more, work more. Reward less, sulk more. The change is the story.
Core Principle
A conditioned response changes disproportionately when reinforcement changes.
Mechanisms
Pending editorial review.
A conditioned response changes disproportionately when reinforcement changes.
Pending editorial review.
Pending editorial review.
Pending editorial review.
Pending editorial review.
Incentive changes have outsized emotional and behavioral effects.
Inputs (Triggers)
Pending editorial review.
Outputs (Behaviors)
Pending editorial review.
Behavioral Signature
Reward more, work more. Reward less, sulk more. The change is the story.
Examples
- A sales team overperforms when commissions increase, then collapses when they are cut.
- Incentive changes have outsized emotional and behavioral effects.
Pending editorial review.
Original analysis from The Incentives Lab — how this element behaves inside real payoff structures.
Why this element matters to incentive design
Most organizations meet this element as a personnel problem. It is not one. The mechanism underneath it is straightforward: a conditioned response changes disproportionately when reinforcement changes. You can recognize it in the field by its signature: reward more, work more. Reward less, sulk more. The change is the story. Every element in the Cognition dimension changes the perceived payoff of an action before the action happens, which is exactly where incentive design has leverage.
How it gets exploited
Left undesigned, incentive changes have outsized emotional and behavioral effects. It is amplified whenever incentive changes have outsized emotional and behavioral effects. Inside organizations that shows up as incentive changes have outsized emotional and behavioral effects. The pattern is the same one Goodhart's Law describes: the measurable proxy attracts the effort, and the purpose behind it quietly loses funding.
How the Lab designs around it
The redesign move is to model the response to both increases and decreases in rewards. The leverage is not in explaining the behavior to people. It is in changing what the behavior earns.
Famous Experiments
Pending editorial review.
Design Principles
- Model the response to both increases and decreases in rewards.
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.
- Model the response to both increases and decreases in rewards.
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.
Unusual or bizarre material is more memorable than common material.
Believing previously learned misinformation even after it has been corrected.
Forcing yourself to explain a concept reveals exactly where your understanding is hollow.
As more facts are learned about a topic, retrieving any one fact slows.
IQ scores have risen substantially over generations.
Items that stand out are more likely to be remembered.
Your capacity to learn, unlearn, and relearn faster than the environment changes.
Malcolm Knowles's principles of adult learning: self-direction, experience as resource, readiness, problem-centered orientation, intrinsic motivation.
Amishi Jha's research: attention is a finite, depletable, but trainable cognitive resource — short daily mindfulness measurably improves it.
Approach a situation as if you knew nothing.
Hierarchy of cognitive learning: Remember → Understand → Apply → Analyze → Evaluate → Create. Benjamin Bloom, 1956 (revised 2001).
Wallace J. Nichols: proximity to water reliably shifts the nervous system toward a calmer, more creative state.
Where Crespi Effect is cited in the corpus
Essays, field guides, and diagnostics from The Incentives Lab that apply this element.
- EssayGoodhart's Law in the Real World
How measurable proxies capture judgment.
- EssayThe Perverse Incentives Hiding in Your KPIs
Cognitive shortcuts turned into scorecards.
- EssayAI Agents Inherit Your Incentives
How this element propagates into automated systems.
- ReferenceThe Periodic Table of Human Behavior
The full 1,267-element map this page belongs to.
- ReferenceThe incentive glossary
Definitions for every mental model, bias, and fallacy in the corpus.
Questions about Crespi Effect
- What is Crespi Effect?
- Crespi Effect is a conditioned response changes disproportionately when reinforcement changes. It sits in the Cognition dimension (COG) of the Human Behavior Taxonomy™ as element HBT-COG-0202, within the Learning family. The core principle: a conditioned response changes disproportionately when reinforcement changes. In incentive terms, it matters because it changes the payoff people perceive before they choose — which means it can be designed for, or exploited.
- What is an example of Crespi Effect?
- Incentive changes have outsized emotional and behavioral effects. The Incentives Lab catalogs everyday, organizational, and historical instances of this element on its Human Behavior Taxonomy™ page (HBT-COG-0202).
- How is Crespi Effect exploited?
- Incentive changes have outsized emotional and behavioral effects.
- How do you design around Crespi Effect?
- Model the response to both increases and decreases in rewards.
- Which behavioral dimension does Crespi Effect belong to?
- Crespi Effect is classified in the Cognition dimension (COG) of the Human Behavior Taxonomy™, family "Learning", class "Mental Model". Its permanent identifier is HBT-COG-0202 and its evidence grade is B.