Scientific Definition
Whatever is pre-selected wins more often than it should.
Plain-English Definition
Whatever is pre-selected wins more often than it should.
Feynman Explanation
The most powerful policy in any company is the checkbox checked by default.
Core Principle
Whatever is pre-selected wins more often than it should.
Mechanisms
Whatever is pre-selected wins more often than it should.
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Inputs (Triggers)
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Outputs (Behaviors)
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Behavioral Signature
The most powerful policy in any company is the checkbox checked by default.
Examples
- 401(k) enrollment skyrockets the day it becomes opt-out.
- Defaults shape adoption more than communications campaigns ever do.
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Famous Experiments
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Design Principles
- Audit every default in every workflow. Defaults are policy.
Measurement Approaches
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Evidence
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The Perverse Incentive Lens™
How this behavior is exploited — and how to redesign around it.
- Audit every default in every workflow. Defaults are policy.
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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.
Adding a clearly worse option steers people toward the option you wanted.
We value things more once they're ours.
The same information lands differently depending on how it's wrapped.
We overvalue things we built ourselves.
Doing something feels safer than doing nothing — even when nothing wins.
Feelings act as shortcuts for facts.
Over-reliance on the first number that hits the table.
We disproportionately prefer rewards now over rewards later.
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.