Scientific Definition
Extreme results tend to be followed by less extreme ones.
Plain-English Definition
Extreme results tend to be followed by less extreme ones.
Feynman Explanation
The hot hand and the cold streak both end.
Core Principle
Extreme results tend to be followed by less extreme ones.
Mechanisms
Pending editorial review.
Extreme results tend to be followed by less extreme ones.
Pending editorial review.
Pending editorial review.
Pending editorial review.
Pending editorial review.
Don't overweight outliers in either direction.
Inputs (Triggers)
Pending editorial review.
Outputs (Behaviors)
Pending editorial review.
Behavioral Signature
The hot hand and the cold streak both end.
Examples
- Performance management. Investment returns.
- Don't overweight outliers in either direction.
Pending editorial review.
Famous Experiments
Pending editorial review.
Design Principles
- Look at rolling averages, not point-in-time peaks or troughs.
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.
- Look at rolling averages, not point-in-time peaks or troughs.
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.
Extreme outcomes tend to be followed by more average ones.
Ignoring general statistics in favor of specific, vivid information.
Posterior = (likelihood × prior) / evidence.
Update beliefs in proportion to the strength of new evidence.
Start with a prior; update with new evidence.
Novices experiencing early success, often due to variance and small samples.
High-impact, hard-to-predict, retrospectively explainable events.
Striking pattern that is statistically expected in large samples.
Reasoning in distributions — ranges and probabilities — rather than points.
Average outcomes across the population differ from outcomes across time for one person.
A rough calculation using order-of-magnitude reasoning.
In quantum mechanics, certain pairs of properties cannot both be precisely known.