Submodalities is the fine-grained sensory qualities of internal experience — brightness, distance, volume, location. It sits in the Cognition dimension (COG) of the Human Behavior Taxonomy™ as element HBT-COG-0644, within the Cognition family. The core principle: the fine-grained sensory qualities of internal experience — brightness, distance, volume, location. 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
The fine-grained sensory qualities of internal experience — brightness, distance, volume, location.
Plain-English Definition
The fine-grained sensory qualities of internal experience — brightness, distance, volume, location.
Feynman Explanation
Most people argue about the content of memories. NLP edits the picture quality.
Core Principle
The fine-grained sensory qualities of internal experience — brightness, distance, volume, location.
Mechanisms
Pending editorial review.
The fine-grained sensory qualities of internal experience — brightness, distance, volume, location.
Pending editorial review.
Pending editorial review.
Pending editorial review.
Pending editorial review.
Performance psychology, fear-of-failure interventions.
Inputs (Triggers)
Pending editorial review.
Outputs (Behaviors)
Pending editorial review.
Behavioral Signature
Most people argue about the content of memories. NLP edits the picture quality.
Examples
- Core NLP construct from Bandler's later work.
- Performance psychology, fear-of-failure interventions.
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: the fine-grained sensory qualities of internal experience — brightness, distance, volume, location. You can recognize it in the field by its signature: most people argue about the content of memories. NLP edits the picture quality. 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, performance psychology, fear-of-failure interventions. It is amplified whenever performance psychology, fear-of-failure interventions. Inside organizations that shows up as performance psychology, fear-of-failure interventions. 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 if a memory still hurts, shrink it, dim it, move it. Test whether the charge follows. Treat it as infrastructure. Once you can see it in your own system, most of the argument about culture resolves itself.
Famous Experiments
Pending editorial review.
Design Principles
- If a memory still hurts, shrink it, dim it, move it. Test whether the charge follows.
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.
- If a memory still hurts, shrink it, dim it, move it. Test whether the charge follows.
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.
Reading micro-shifts in another person's state — breath, color, micro-expression — in real time.
Tools, notebooks, and trusted others are literally part of your cognitive system — not just aids to it.
Eye movements that loosely correlate with which representational system is active — visual, auditory, kinesthetic.
The sense of the internal state of the body — heartbeat, hunger, tension.
Brain region for planning, impulse control, and executive function.
The sense of where the body is in space.
Changing the meaning of an experience by changing the frame around it.
The conditions under which a target accepts an influence attempt without scrutiny.
A controlled scenario, often impossible, used to isolate a variable and test an intuition or theory.
What we wear influences how we think and perform.
How will I feel about this in 10 minutes / 10 months / 10 years?
Basics first (health/finances), then depth (mastery/impact), then altruism (widening circle).
Where Submodalities 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.
- 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 Submodalities
- What is Submodalities?
- Submodalities is the fine-grained sensory qualities of internal experience — brightness, distance, volume, location. It sits in the Cognition dimension (COG) of the Human Behavior Taxonomy™ as element HBT-COG-0644, within the Cognition family. The core principle: the fine-grained sensory qualities of internal experience — brightness, distance, volume, location. 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 Submodalities?
- Performance psychology, fear-of-failure interventions. The Incentives Lab catalogs everyday, organizational, and historical instances of this element on its Human Behavior Taxonomy™ page (HBT-COG-0644).
- How is Submodalities exploited?
- Performance psychology, fear-of-failure interventions.
- How do you design around Submodalities?
- If a memory still hurts, shrink it, dim it, move it. Test whether the charge follows.
- Which behavioral dimension does Submodalities belong to?
- Submodalities is classified in the Cognition dimension (COG) of the Human Behavior Taxonomy™, family "Cognition", class "Mental Model". Its permanent identifier is HBT-COG-0644 and its evidence grade is B.