Scientific Definition
Yellow and Turquoise vMemes — first systems that recognize the legitimacy of all earlier value systems.
Plain-English Definition
Yellow and Turquoise vMemes — first systems that recognize the legitimacy of all earlier value systems.
Feynman Explanation
First tier fights about which level is right. Second tier asks what each level is for.
Core Principle
Yellow and Turquoise vMemes — first systems that recognize the legitimacy of all earlier value systems.
Mechanisms
Pending editorial review.
Yellow and Turquoise vMemes — first systems that recognize the legitimacy of all earlier value systems.
Pending editorial review.
Pending editorial review.
Pending editorial review.
Pending editorial review.
Senior change leaders need second-tier capability or transformation programs become factional warfare.
Inputs (Triggers)
Pending editorial review.
Outputs (Behaviors)
Pending editorial review.
Behavioral Signature
First tier fights about which level is right. Second tier asks what each level is for.
Examples
- Beck & Cowan's leap-of-meaning; takes <5% of the global population, per the original research.
- Senior change leaders need second-tier capability or transformation programs become factional warfare.
Pending editorial review.
Famous Experiments
Pending editorial review.
Design Principles
- Develop perspective-taking across all six first-tier vMemes before trying to lead change above them.
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.
- Develop perspective-taking across all six first-tier vMemes before trying to lead change above them.
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.
Each value system (Beige through Green) believes itself to be the only valid one and dismisses the others.
Cultures vary in how strictly norms are enforced and deviance punished.
The relative weight a culture gives to individual goals vs. group cohesion.
The combination of historical, social, and existential pressures that activates the next vMeme.
How much hierarchical inequality a culture accepts as normal.
A developmental model of human value systems (vMemes) emerging in response to life conditions.
Western, Educated, Industrialized, Rich, Democratic — a tiny, atypical psychological sample.
Imagining what could have happened instead of what did.
Reasoning from foundational truths rather than from analogy or convention.
Players reason a fixed number of steps ahead about what others will do — and rarely beyond level 2 or 3.
Expecting change to happen at a constant rate.
Reason in distributions, not in points.