Scientific Definition
Bad lands harder than good.
Plain-English Definition
Bad lands harder than good.
Feynman Explanation
One bad review erases ten good ones in your head.
Core Principle
Bad lands harder than good.
Mechanisms
Bad lands harder than good.
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Inputs (Triggers)
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Outputs (Behaviors)
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Behavioral Signature
One bad review erases ten good ones in your head.
Examples
- Annual reviews dominated by one missed quarter despite three strong ones.
- Risk and conservatism over-weighted in cultures with no offsetting reward for upside.
Pending editorial review.
Famous Experiments
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Design Principles
- Symmetric celebration of wins. Forced positive evidence reviews.
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.
- Symmetric celebration of wins. Forced positive evidence reviews.
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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.
Perceiving meaningful connections in unrelated things.
People look better in groups than as individuals.
Seeing patterns in random data.
Prior solutions block better new ones.
Seeing things only in their conventional use.
Familiarity breeds approval.
Doing something feels safer than doing nothing — even when nothing wins.
Feelings act as shortcuts for facts.
We prefer known risks to unknown ones, even when the unknown is better.
Over-reliance on the first number that hits the table.
We judge frequency by how easily examples come to mind.
We ignore underlying probabilities in favor of vivid specifics.