Scientific Definition
A leader's conviction warps what others believe is possible — for better and for worse.
Plain-English Definition
A leader's conviction warps what others believe is possible — for better and for worse.
Feynman Explanation
Jobs and Musk used it to compress decades. Theranos used it to delete reality.
Core Principle
A leader's conviction warps what others believe is possible — for better and for worse.
Mechanisms
Pending editorial review.
A leader's conviction warps what others believe is possible — for better and for worse.
Pending editorial review.
Pending editorial review.
Pending editorial review.
Pending editorial review.
Vision is leverage. Vision unmoored from physics is fraud waiting to be discovered.
Inputs (Triggers)
Pending editorial review.
Outputs (Behaviors)
Pending editorial review.
Behavioral Signature
Jobs and Musk used it to compress decades. Theranos used it to delete reality.
Examples
- Apple shipping the original iPhone on a schedule that engineers said couldn't be hit.
- Vision is leverage. Vision unmoored from physics is fraud waiting to be discovered.
Pending editorial review.
Famous Experiments
Pending editorial review.
Design Principles
- Pair every reality-distortion claim with falsifiable milestones and external audit.
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.
- Pair every reality-distortion claim with falsifiable milestones and external audit.
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.
A group decides on a course of action that nobody actually wants, because everyone assumes others prefer it.
Power tends to corrupt, and absolute power corrupts absolutely.
We attribute our own actions to situations but others' actions to their character.
We favor people who are similar to us or who like us.
Sacrificing for others without expecting a personal reward.
Masking the sponsors of a message to make it appear grassroots.
Disagreement grows more extreme as the parties think more about the issue.
Systematic errors in explaining the causes of behavior — yours or others'.
We accept vague, general statements as personally meaningful.
Adding the word 'because' (with any reason) increases compliance dramatically.
Behaviors spread through groups via observation and imitation.
We come to like people we've done a favor for, more than people who've helped us.