Scientific Definition
We notice what's present more than what's absent.
Plain-English Definition
We notice what's present more than what's absent.
Feynman Explanation
The dog that didn't bark is the clue we miss.
Core Principle
We notice what's present more than what's absent.
Mechanisms
Pending editorial review.
We notice what's present more than what's absent.
Pending editorial review.
Pending editorial review.
Pending editorial review.
Pending editorial review.
Strategic gaps are often invisible because absence doesn't trigger attention.
Inputs (Triggers)
Pending editorial review.
Outputs (Behaviors)
Pending editorial review.
Behavioral Signature
The dog that didn't bark is the clue we miss.
Examples
- Diagnosing org problems by what's there, missing what's structurally missing.
- Strategic gaps are often invisible because absence doesn't trigger attention.
Pending editorial review.
Famous Experiments
Pending editorial review.
Design Principles
- Explicitly ask 'what's missing here?' as a standard diagnostic question.
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.
- Explicitly ask 'what's missing here?' as a standard diagnostic question.
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.
Vague personality descriptions feel uniquely accurate.
Doing something good gives us mental permission to do something bad.
We remember the beginning and the end of a list better than the middle.
Looking where the light is, not where the keys are.
Deriving general rules from specific examples; the leap from instance to concept.
The brain evolved to reason adaptively, not always truthfully, to reduce the cost of errors.
We solve problems by adding, even when subtracting would be better.
Assuming that if one option is true, another must be false, when both can be true.
Presuming a purposeful actor behind events that may have no actor at all.
What cannot be settled by experiment is not worth debating.
A finite set of well-defined instructions for solving a problem or performing a computation.
Every model simplifies reality; some are still useful.