Scientific Definition
Doing something good gives us mental permission to do something bad.
Plain-English Definition
Doing something good gives us mental permission to do something bad.
Feynman Explanation
Salad for lunch → cheesecake for dessert. ESG report → emissions binge.
Core Principle
Doing something good gives us mental permission to do something bad.
Mechanisms
Pending editorial review.
Doing something good gives us mental permission to do something bad.
Pending editorial review.
Pending editorial review.
Pending editorial review.
Pending editorial review.
Diversity, ESG, and ethics programs can ironically license worse behavior elsewhere.
Inputs (Triggers)
Pending editorial review.
Outputs (Behaviors)
Pending editorial review.
Behavioral Signature
Salad for lunch → cheesecake for dessert. ESG report → emissions binge.
Examples
- Donating to charity, then cheating more on the next task.
- Diversity, ESG, and ethics programs can ironically license worse behavior elsewhere.
Pending editorial review.
Famous Experiments
Pending editorial review.
Design Principles
- Measure end-state behavior, not intermediate virtuous acts.
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.
- Measure end-state behavior, not intermediate virtuous acts.
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.
We notice what's present more than what's absent.
Vague personality descriptions feel uniquely accurate.
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.