Scientific Definition
We overvalue things we built ourselves.
Plain-English Definition
We overvalue things we built ourselves.
Feynman Explanation
The deck you stayed up writing is now the strategy.
Core Principle
We overvalue things we built ourselves.
Mechanisms
We overvalue things we built ourselves.
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Inputs (Triggers)
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Outputs (Behaviors)
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Behavioral Signature
The deck you stayed up writing is now the strategy.
Examples
- Internal tools defended past the point where buying would be cheaper and better.
- 'Build vs. buy' debates corrupted by labor investment, not economics.
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Famous Experiments
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Design Principles
- Require a no-ego TCO comparison signed by someone outside the team.
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.
- Require a no-ego TCO comparison signed by someone outside the team.
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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.
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.
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.