Social Preferences is preferences that depend on others' outcomes — fairness, reciprocity, altruism, inequity aversion. It sits in the Cognition dimension (COG) of the Human Behavior Taxonomy™ as element HBT-COG-0628, within the Social family. The core principle: preferences that depend on others' outcomes — fairness, reciprocity, altruism, inequity aversion. In incentive terms, it matters because it changes the payoff people perceive before they choose — which means it can be designed for, or exploited.
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.
Original analysis from The Incentives Lab — how this element behaves inside real payoff structures.
Why this element matters to incentive design
This element is common enough to feel like human nature and specific enough to be engineered around. The mechanism underneath it is straightforward: preferences that depend on others' outcomes — fairness, reciprocity, altruism, inequity aversion. You can recognize it in the field by its signature: the 'social' part is doing more work than economics admitted for a century. Every element in the Cognition dimension changes the perceived payoff of an action before the action happens, which is exactly where incentive design has leverage.
How it gets exploited
Left undesigned, comp, recognition, and culture are governed by social preferences, not by pure self-interest. It is amplified whenever comp, recognition, and culture are governed by social preferences, not by pure self-interest. Inside organizations that shows up as comp, recognition, and culture are governed by social preferences, not by pure self-interest. The pattern is the same one Goodhart's Law describes: the measurable proxy attracts the effort, and the purpose behind it quietly loses funding.
How the Lab designs around it
The redesign move is to model your people as social, not solo, optimizers. Design against it the way you would design against a known failure mode — assume it will appear, and price the exploit before someone finds it.
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.
Where Social Preferences is cited in the corpus
Essays, field guides, and diagnostics from The Incentives Lab that apply this element.
- EssayGoodhart's Law in the Real World
How measurable proxies capture judgment.
- EssayThe Perverse Incentives Hiding in Your KPIs
Cognitive shortcuts turned into scorecards.
- EssayAI Agents Inherit Your Incentives
How this element propagates into automated systems.
- CourseIncentives 101
The free ten-part primer on reading a payoff structure.
- ReferenceThe incentive glossary
Definitions for every mental model, bias, and fallacy in the corpus.
- ReferenceThe Periodic Table of Human Behavior
The full 1,267-element map this page belongs to.
Questions about Social Preferences
- What is Social Preferences?
- Social Preferences is preferences that depend on others' outcomes — fairness, reciprocity, altruism, inequity aversion. It sits in the Cognition dimension (COG) of the Human Behavior Taxonomy™ as element HBT-COG-0628, within the Social family. The core principle: preferences that depend on others' outcomes — fairness, reciprocity, altruism, inequity aversion. In incentive terms, it matters because it changes the payoff people perceive before they choose — which means it can be designed for, or exploited.
- What is an example of Social Preferences?
- Comp, recognition, and culture are governed by social preferences, not by pure self-interest. The Incentives Lab catalogs everyday, organizational, and historical instances of this element on its Human Behavior Taxonomy™ page (HBT-COG-0628).
- How is Social Preferences exploited?
- Comp, recognition, and culture are governed by social preferences, not by pure self-interest.
- How do you design around Social Preferences?
- Model your people as social, not solo, optimizers.
- Which behavioral dimension does Social Preferences belong to?
- Social Preferences is classified in the Cognition dimension (COG) of the Human Behavior Taxonomy™, family "Social", class "Mental Model". Its permanent identifier is HBT-COG-0628 and its evidence grade is B.