Scientific Definition
Losses hurt roughly twice as much as equivalent gains feel good.
Plain-English Definition
Losses hurt roughly twice as much as equivalent gains feel good.
Feynman Explanation
Most strategy is grief management.
Core Principle
Losses hurt roughly twice as much as equivalent gains feel good.
Mechanisms
Losses hurt roughly twice as much as equivalent gains feel good.
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Inputs (Triggers)
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Outputs (Behaviors)
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Behavioral Signature
Most strategy is grief management.
Examples
- Holding a failing initiative because shutting it down 'admits loss.'
- Org charts calcify around protecting sunk investments rather than chasing new ones.
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Famous Experiments
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Design Principles
- Frame status quo as an active cost. Inaction is a decision; price it.
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.
- Frame status quo as an active cost. Inaction is a decision; price it.
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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.
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.
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.
We disproportionately prefer rewards now over rewards later.
We overvalue things we built ourselves.
Believing more information leads to better decisions, regardless of relevance.
When trivial metrics become the target, the trivial becomes the strategy.
We treat money differently depending on which bucket it's in.