Scientific Definition
Preferences that depend on others' outcomes — fairness, reciprocity, altruism, inequity aversion.
Plain-English Definition
Preferences that depend on others' outcomes — fairness, reciprocity, altruism, inequity aversion.
Feynman Explanation
The 'social' part is doing more work than economics admitted for a century.
Core Principle
Preferences that depend on others' outcomes — fairness, reciprocity, altruism, inequity aversion.
Mechanisms
Pending editorial review.
Preferences that depend on others' outcomes — fairness, reciprocity, altruism, inequity aversion.
Pending editorial review.
Pending editorial review.
Pending editorial review.
Pending editorial review.
Comp, recognition, and culture are governed by social preferences, not by pure self-interest.
Inputs (Triggers)
Pending editorial review.
Outputs (Behaviors)
Pending editorial review.
Behavioral Signature
The 'social' part is doing more work than economics admitted for a century.
Examples
- Ultimatum, dictator, and trust games all reveal them.
- Comp, recognition, and culture are governed by social preferences, not by pure self-interest.
Pending editorial review.
Famous Experiments
Pending editorial review.
Design Principles
- Model your people as social, not solo, optimizers.
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.
- Model your people as social, not solo, optimizers.
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.