Scientific Definition
People operate in promotion focus (chasing gains, eager) or prevention focus (avoiding losses, vigilant).
Plain-English Definition
People operate in promotion focus (chasing gains, eager) or prevention focus (avoiding losses, vigilant).
Feynman Explanation
Sales is mostly promotion. Compliance is mostly prevention. Mismatch them at your peril.
Core Principle
People operate in promotion focus (chasing gains, eager) or prevention focus (avoiding losses, vigilant).
Mechanisms
Pending editorial review.
People operate in promotion focus (chasing gains, eager) or prevention focus (avoiding losses, vigilant).
Pending editorial review.
Pending editorial review.
Pending editorial review.
Pending editorial review.
Messaging, incentive design, and team composition all benefit from focus-matching.
Inputs (Triggers)
Pending editorial review.
Outputs (Behaviors)
Pending editorial review.
Behavioral Signature
Sales is mostly promotion. Compliance is mostly prevention. Mismatch them at your peril.
Examples
- Same product framed as 'get more' vs. 'don't lose what you have' shifts uptake.
- Messaging, incentive design, and team composition all benefit from focus-matching.
Pending editorial review.
Famous Experiments
Pending editorial review.
Design Principles
- Match the frame to the audience's regulatory focus, not to your own.
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.
- Match the frame to the audience's regulatory focus, not to your own.
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.
Psychological distance shifts thinking between abstract and concrete.
People value gains and losses asymmetrically, and judge relative to a reference point.
Otto Scharmer's U-shaped process for moving from habitual response to sensing what wants to emerge.
How will I feel about this in 10 minutes / 10 months / 10 years?
Inattention or forgetfulness caused by low attention, hyperfocus, or distraction.
Forgetting to compare an offer with the next-best alternative.
Outcomes that could have happened but did not.
Overthinking a situation so that decision-making stalls.
The first number on the table silently sets the range for every number after it.
Tversky & Kahneman's classic: identical outcomes flip from 'risk averse' to 'risk seeking' when framed as lives saved vs. lives lost.
Our perception is shaped by what we selectively pay attention to.
Favoring suggestions from automated systems over conflicting human judgment.